THE 

SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 
IN  LITERATURE 


WORKS  BY  ARTHUR  SYMONS 


Cities  ( Illustrated ) 

Cities  of  Italy 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning 
(New  Edition) 

Plays,  Acting  and  Music 

The  Romantic  Movement  in  English 
Poetry 

Spiritual  Adventures 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Verse 

Studies  in  Seven  Arts 

William  Blake 

Figures  of  Several  Centuries 

Colour  Studies  in  Paris  ( Illustrated) 

The  Symbolist  Movement  in  Literature 

(Revised  and  Enlarged  Edition) 

E.  P.  DUTTON  & COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


THE 

SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 
IN  LITERATURE 


BY 

ARTHUR  SYMONS 

Author  of 

V Cities  of  Italy,”  "Plays,  Acting  and  Music,”  "The  Romantic 
Movement  in  English  Literature,"  "Studies  in  Seven 
Arts,’’  "Colour  Studies  in  Paris,"  etc. 


REVISED  AND  ENLARGED  EDITION 


New  York 

E.  P.  DUTTON  & COMPANY 

681  Fifth  Avenue 


Copyright,  1919 

By  E.  P.  DUTTON  & COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


L 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

1 

Balzac 

10 

■'Prosper  Merimee 

43 

Gerard  de  Nerval  . 

69 

Th^ophile  Gautier  . 

96 

Gustave  Flaubert  . 

^103 ') 

Charles  Baudelaire 

Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt  . 

119 

VlLLIERS  DE  L’IsLE-AdAM 

134 

L£on  Cladel 

156 

A Note  on  Zola’s  Method 

162 

St^phane  Mallarme 

180 

Paul  Verlaine  .... 

204 

Joris-Karl  Huysmans 

230 

Arthur  Rimbaud 

280 

Jules  Laforgue  .... 

296 

Maeterlinck  as  a Mystic  . 

307 

Conclusion 

324 

Bibliography  and  Notes 

331 

Translations 

367 

v 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
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Duke  University  Libraries 


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THE 

SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 
IN  LITERATURE 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


INTRODUCTION 

“It  is  in  and  through  Symbols  that  man,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  lives,  works,  and  has  his  being:  those  ages, 
moreover,  are  accounted  the  noblest  which  can  the  best 
recognise  symbolical  worth,  and  prize  it  highest.” 

Carlyle 

Without  symbolism  there  can  be  no  lit- 
erature; indeed,  not  even  language.  What 
are  words  themselves  but  symbols,  almost  as 
arbitrary  as  the  letters  which  compose  them, 
mere  sounds  of  the  voice  to  which  we  have 
agreed  to  give  certain  significations,  as  we  have 
agreed  to  translate  these  sounds  by  those  com- 
binations of  letters  ? Symbolism  began  with 
the  first  words  uttered  by  the  first  man,  as  he 
named  every  living  thing;  or  before  them,  in 
heaven,  when  God  named  the  world  into  being. 
And  we  see,  in  these  beginnings,  precisely  what 
Symbolism  in  literature  really  is:  a form  of 


2 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


expression,  at  the  best  but  approximate,  essen- 
tially but  arbitrary,  until  it  has  obtained  the 
force  of  a convention,  for  an  unseen  reality  ap- 
prehended by  the  consciousness.  It  is  some- 
times permitted  to  us  to  hope  that  our  conven- 
tion is  indeed  the  reflection  rather  than  merely 
the  sign  of  that  unseen  reality.  We  have  done 
much  if  we  have  found  a recognisable  sign. 

“A  symbol,”  says  Comte  Goblet  d’Alviella, 
in  his  book  on  The  Migration  of  Symbols, 
“might  be  defined  as  a representation  which 
does  not  aim  at  being  a reproduction.”  Orig- 
inally, as  he  points  out,  used  by  the  Greeks  to 
denote  “the  two  halves  of  the  tablet  they 
divided  between  themselves  as  a pledge  of 
hospitality,”  it  came  to  be  used  of  every  sign, 
formula,  or  rite  by  which  those  initiated  in 
any  mystery  made  themselves  secretly  known 
to  one  another.  Gradually  the  word  ex- 
tended its  meaning,  until  it  came  to  denote 
every  conventional  representation  of  idea  by 
form,  of  the  unseen  by  the  visible.  “In  a 
Symbol,”  says  Carlyle,  “there  is  concealment 
and  yet  revelation:  hence,  therefore,  by  Silence 
and  by  Speech  acting  together,  comes  a double 
significance.”  And,  in  that  fine  chapter  of 


INTRODUCTION 


3 


Sartor  Resartus,  he  goes  further,  vindicating 
for  the  word  its  full  value:  “In  the  Symbol 
proper,  what  we  can  call  a Symbol,  there  is 
ever,  more  or  less  distinctly  and  directly,  some 
embodiment  and  revelation  of  the  Infinite; 
the  Infinite  is  made  to  blend  itself  with  the 
Finite,  to  stand  visible,  and  as  it  were,  attain- 
able there.” 

It  is  in  such  a sense  as  this  that  the  word 
Symbolism  has  been  used  to  describe  a move- 
ment which,  during  the  last  generation,  has 
profoundly  influenced  the  course  of  French 
literature.  All  such  words,  used  of  anything 
so  living,  variable,  and  irresponsible  as  litera- 
ture, are,  as  symbols  themselves  must  so  often 
be,  mere  compromises,  mere  indications.  Sym- 
bolism, as  seen  in  the  writers  of  our  day,  would 
have  no  value  if  it  were  not  seen  also,  under 
one  disguise  or  another,  in  every  great  imagi- 
native writer.  What  distinguishes  the  Symbol- 
ism of  our  day  from  the  Symbolism  of  the  past 
is  that  it  has  now  become  conscious  of  itself,  in/ 
a sense  in  which  it  was  unconscious  even  in 
G6rard  de  Nerval,  to  whom  I trace  the  particu- 
lar origin  of  the  literature  which  I call  Sym- 
bolist. The  forces  which  mould  the  thought  of 


4 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


men  change,  or  men’s  resistance  to  them  slack- 
ens; with  the  change  of  men’s  thought  comes 
a change  of  literature,  alike  in  its  inmost 
essence  and  in  its  outward  form:  after  the 
■world  has  starved  its  soul  long  enough  in  the 
contemplation  and  the  re-arrangement  of  ma- 
terial things,  comes  the  turn  of  the  soul;  and 
with  it  comes  the  literature  of  which  I write  in 
this  volume,  a literature  in  which  the  visible 
world  is  no  longer  a reality,  and  the  unseen 
world  no  longer  a dream. 

The  great  epoch  in  French  literature  which 
preceded  this  epoch  was  that  of  the  offshoot 
of  Romanticism  which  produced  Baudelaire, 
Flaubert,  the  Goncourts,  Taine,  Zola,  Leconte 
de  Lisle.  Taine  was  the  philosopher  both 
of  what  had  gone  before  him  and  of  what 
came  immediately  after;  so  that  he  seems  to 
explain  at  once  Flaubert  and  Zola.  It  was 
the  age  of  Science,  the  age  of  material  things; 
and  words,  with  that  facile  elasticity  which 
there  is  in  them,  did  miracles  in  the  exact 
representation  of  everything  that  visibly  ex- 
isted, exactly  as  it  existed.  Even  Baudelaire, 
in  whom  the  spirit  is  always  an  uneasy  guest 
at  the  orgie  of  life,  had  a certain  theory  of 


INTRODUCTION 


5 


Realism  which  tortures  many  of  his  poems  into 
strange,  metallic  shapes,  and  fills  them  with 
imitative  odours,  and  disturbs  them  with  a too 
deliberate  rhetoric  of  the  flesh.  Flaubert,  the 
one  impeccable  novelist  who  has  ever  lived, 
was  resolute  to  be  the  novelist  of  a world  in 
which  art,  formal  art,  was  the  only  escape 
from  the  burden  of  reality,  and  in  which  the 
soul  was  of  use  mainly  as  the  agent  of  fine 
literature.  The  Goncourts  caught  at  Impres- 
sionism to  render  the  fugitive  aspects  of  a 
world  which  existed  only  as  a thing  of  flat 
spaces,  and  angles,  and  coloured  movement, 
in  which  sun  and  shadow  were  the  artists; 
as  moods,  no  less  flitting,  were  the  artists  of 
the  merely  receptive  consciousnesses  of  men 
and  women.  Zola  has  tried  to  build  in  brick 
and  mortar  inside  the  covers  of  a book;  he  is 
quite  sure  that  the  soul  is  a nervous  fluid, 
which  he  is  quite  sure  some  man  of  science  is 
about  to  catch  for  us,  as  a man  of  science  has 
bottled  the  air,  a pretty,  blue  liquid.  Leconte 
de  Lisle  turned  the  wrorld  to  stone,  but  saw, 
beyond  the  world,  onlj  a pause  from  misery 
in  a Nirvana  never  subtilised  to  the  Eastern 
ecstasy.  And,  with  all  these  writers,  form 


6 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


aimed  above  all  things  at  being  precise,  at 
saying  rather  than  suggesting,  at  saying  what 
they  had  to  say  so  completely  that  nothing 
remained  over,  which  it  might  be  the  business 
of  the  reader  to  divine.  And  so  they  have 
expressed,  finally,  a certain  aspect  of  the 
world;  and  some  of  them  have  carried  style 
to  a point  beyond  which  the  style  that  says, 
rather  than  suggests,  cannot  go.  The  whole  of 
that  movement  comes  to  a splendid  funeral 
in  M.  de  Heredia’s  sonnets,  in  which  the  liter- 
ature of  form  says  its  last  word,  and  dies. 

Meanwhile,  something  which  is  vaguely 
called  Decadence  had  come  into  being.  That 
name,  rarely  used  with  any  precise  meaning, 
was  usually  either  hurled  as  a reproach  or 
hurled  back  as  a defiance.  It  pleased  some 
young  men  in  various  countries  to  call  them- 
selves Decadents,  with  all  the  thrill  of  unsatis- 
fied virtue  masquerading  as  uncomprehended 
vice.  As  a matter  of  fact,  the  term  is  in  its 
place  only  when  applied  to  style;  to  that  in- 
genious deformation  of  the  language,  in  Mal- 
larm6  for  instance,  which  can  be  compared 
with  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  Greek 
and  Latin  of  the  Decadence.  No  doubt  per- 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


versity  of  form  and  perversity  of  matter  are 
often  found  together,  and,  among  the  lesser 
men  especially,  experiment  was  carried  far, 
not  only  in  the  direction  of  style.  But  a move- 
ment which  in  this  sense  might  be  called  De- 
cadent could  but  have  been  a straying  aside 
from  the  main  road  of  literature.  Nothing,  not 
even  conventional  virtue,  is  so  provincial  as 
conventional  vice;  and  the  desire  to  “bewilder 
the  middl e-classes’’  is  itself  middle-class.  The 
interlude,  half  a mock-interlude,  of  Decadence, 
diverted  the  attention  of  the  critics  while 
something  more  serious  was  in  preparation. 
That  something  more  serious  has  crystallised, 
for  the  time,  under  the  form  of  Symbolism, 
in  which  art  returns  to  the  one  pathway, 
leading  through  beautiful  things  to  the  eternal 
beauty. 

In  most  of  the  writers  whom  I have  dealt 
with  as  summing  up  in  themselves  all  that  is 
best  in  Symbolism,  it  will  be  noticed  that  the 
form  is  very  carefully  elaborated,  and  seems 
to  count  for  at  least  as  much  as  in  those 
writers  of  whose  over-possession  by  form  I 
have  complained.  Here,  however,  all  this 
elaboration  comes  from  a very  different  motive 


8 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


and  leads  to  other  ends.  There  is  such  a 
thing  as  perfecting  form  that  form  may  be 
annihilated.  All  the  art  of  Verlaine  is  in 
bringing  verse  to  a bird’s  song,  the  art  of 
Mallarm6  in  bringing  verse  to  the  song  of  an 
orchestra.  In  Villiers  de  lTsle-Adam  drama 
becomes  an  embodiment  of  spiritual  forces, 
in  Maeterlinck  not  even  their  embodiment, 
but  the  remote  sound  of  their  voices.  It 
is  all  an  attempt  to  spiritualise  literature,  to 
evade  the  old  bondage  of  rhetoric,  the  old 
bondage  of  exteriority.  Description  is  ban- 
ished that  beautiful  things  may  be  evoked, 
magically;  the  regular  beat  of  verse  is  broken 
in  order  that  words  may  fly,  upon  subtler 
wings.  Mystery  is  no  longer  feared,  as  the 
great  mystery  in  whose  midst  we  are  islanded 
was  feared  by  those  to  whom  that  unknown 
sea  was  only  a great  void.  We  are  coming 
closer  to  nature,  as  we  seem  to  shrink  from  it 
with  something  of  horror,  disdaining  to  cata- 
logue the  trees  of  the  forest.  And  as  we  brush 
aside  the  accidents  of  daily  life,  in  which 
men  and  women  imagine  that  they  are 
alone  touching  reality,  we  come  closer  to 
humanity,  to  everything  in  humanity  that 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


may  have  begun  before  the  world  and  may 
outlast  it. 

Here,  then,  in  this  revolt  against  exteriority, 
against  rhetoric,  against  a materialistic  tra- 
dition; in  this  endeavour  to  disengage  the  ulti- 
mate essence,  the  soul,  of  whatever  exists  and 
can  be  realized  by  the  consciousness;  in  this 
dutiful  waiting  upon  every  symbol  by  which 
the  soul  of  things  can  be  made  visible;  liter- 
ature, bowed  down  by  so  many  burdens,  may 
at  last  attain  liberty,  and  its  authentic  speech. 
In  attaining  this  liberty,  it  accepts  a heavier 
burden;  for  in  speaking  to  us  so  intimately,  so 
solemnly,  as  only  religion  had  hitherto  spoken 
to  us,  it  becomes  itself  a kind  of  religion,  with 
all  the  duties  and  responsibilities  of  the  sacred 
ritual. 


BALZAC 


1 

The  first  man  who  has  completely  under- 
stood Balzac  is  Rodin,  and  it  has  taken  Rodin 
ten  years  to  realise  his  own  conception.  France 
has  refused  the  statue  in  which  a novelist  is 
represented  as  a dreamer,  to  whom  Paris  is 
not  so  much  Paris  as  Patmos:  “the  most 
Parisian  of  our  novelists,”  Frenchmen  assure 
you.  It  is  more  than  a hundred  years  since 
Balzac  was  born:  a hundred  years  is  a long 
time  in  which  to  be  misunderstood  with  admir- 
ation. 

In  choosing  the  name  of  the  Human  Comedy 
for  a series  of  novels  in  which,  as  he  says,  there 
is  at  once  “the  history  and  the  criticism  of 
society,  the  analysis  of  its  evils,  and  the  dis- 
cussion of  its  principles,”  Balzac  proposed  to 
do  for  the  modern  world  what  Dante,  in  his 
Divine  Comedy,  had  done  for  the  world  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  Condemned  to  write  in  prose, 

10 


BALZAC 


11 


and  finding  his  opportunity  in  that  restriction, 
he  created  for  himself  a form  which  is  perhaps 
the  nearest  equivalent  for  the  epic  or  the  poetic 
drama,  and  the  only  form  in  which,  at  all 
events,  the  epic  is  now  possible.  The  world 
of  Dante  was  materially  simple  compared  with 
the  world  of  the  nineteenth  century:  the  “ vis- 
ible world”  had  not  yet  begun  to  “exist,”  in 
its  tyrannical  modern  sense;  the  complications 
of  the  soul  interested  only  the  Schoolmen, 
and  were  a part  of  theology;  poetry  could  still 
represent  an  age  and  yet  be  poetry.  But 
to-day  poetry  can  no  longer  represent  more 
than  the  soul  of  things;  it  had  taken  refuge 
from  the  terrible  improvements  of  civilisation 
in  a divine  seclusion,  where  it  sings,  disre- 
garding the  many  voices  of  the  street.  Prose 
comes  offering  its  infinite  capacity  for  detail; 
and  it  is  by  the  infinity  of  its  detail  that  the 
novel,  as  Balzac  created  it,  has  become  the 
modern  epic. 

There  had  been  great  novels,  indeed,  before 
Balzac,  but  no  great  novelist;  and  the  novels 
themselves  are  scarcely  what  we  should  to-day 
call  by  that  name.  The  interminable  Astree 
and  its  companions  form  a link  between  the 


12 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


fabliaux  and  the  novel,  and  from  them  devel- 
oped the  characteristic  eighteenth-century 
conte,  in  narrative,  letters,  or  dialogue,  as  we 
see  it  in  Marivaux,  Laclos,  Crebillon  fils. 
Crebillon’s  longer  works,  including  Le  Sopha, 
with  their  conventional  paraphernalia  of  East- 
ern fable,  are  extremely  tedious;  but  in  two 
short  pieces,  La  Nuit  et  le  Moment  and  Le 
Hasard  du  Coin  du  Feu,  he  created  a model  of 
witty,  naughty,  deplorably  natural  comedy, 
which  to  this  day  is  one  of  the  most  character- 
istic French  forms  of  fiction.  Properly,  how- 
ever, it  is  a form  of  the  drama  rather  than  of 
the  novel.  Laclos,  in  Les  Liaisons  Danger- 
euses,  a masterpiece  which  scandalised  the 
society  that  adored  Crebillon,  because  its 
naked  human  truth  left  no  room  for  senti- 
mental excuses,  comes  much  nearer  to  prefigur- 
ing the  novel  (as  Stendhal,  for  instance,  is 
afterward  to  conceive  it),  but  still  preserves 
the  awkward  traditional  form  of  letters.  Mair- 
vaux  had  indeed  already  seemed  to  suggest  the 
novel  of  analysis,  but  in  a style  which  has 
christened  a whole  manner  of  writing  that  pre- 
cisely which  is  least  suited  to  the  writing  of 
fiction.  Voltaire’s  conies,  La  Religieuse  of 


BALZAC 


13 


Diderot,  are  tracts  or  satires  in  which  the  story 
is  only  an  excuse  for  the  purpose.  Rousseau, 
too,  has  his  purpose,  even  in  La  Nouvelle 
Heloise,  but  it  is  a humanising  purpose;  and 
with  that  book  the  novel  of  passion  comes  into 
existence,  and  along  with  it  the  descriptive 
novel.  Yet  with  Rousseau  this  result  is  an 
accident  of  genius;  we  cannot  call  him  a 
novelist;  and  we  find  him  abandoning  the 
form  he  has  found,  for  another,  more  closely 
personal,  which  suits  him  better.  Restif  de 
la  Rretonne,  who  followed  Rousseau  at  a dis- 
tance, not  altogether  wisely,  developed  the 
form  of  half-imaginary  autobiography  in  Mon- 
sieur Nicolas,  a book  of  which  the  most  signifi- 
cant part  may  be  compared  with  Hazlitt’s 
Liber  Amoris.  Morbid  and  even  mawkish  as 
it  is,  it  has  a certain  uneasy,  unwholesome 
humanity  in  its  confessions,  which  may  seem 
to  have  set  a fashion  only  too  scrupulously  fol- 
lowed by  modern  French  novelists.  Mean- 
while, the  Abbe  Pr4vost’s  one  great  story, 
Manon  Lescaut,  had  brought  for  once  a purely 
objective  study,  of  an  incomparable  simplicity, 
into  the  midst  of  these  analyses  of  difficult 
souls;  and  then  we  return  to  the  confession, 


14 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


in  the  works  of  others  not  novelists:  Benjamin 
Constant,  Mme.  de  Stael,  Chateaubriand,  in 
Adolphe,  Corinne,  Rene.  At  once  we  are  in 
the  Romantic  movement,  a movement  which 
begins  lyrically  among  poets,  and  at  first  with 
a curious  disregard  of  the  more  human  part  of 
humanity. 

Balzac  worked  contemporaneously  with  the 
Romantic  movement,  but  he  worked  outside  it, 
and  its  influence  upon  him  is  felt  only  in  an 
occasional  pseudo-romanticism,  like  the  episode 
of  the  pirate  in  La  Femme  de  Trente  Ans.  His 
vision  of  humanity  was  essentially  a poetic 
vision,  but  he  was  a poet  whose  dreams  were 
facts.  Knowing  that,  as  Mme.  Necker  has 
said,  "the  novel  should  be  the  better  world,” 
he  knew  also  that  “the  novel  would  be  nothing 
if,  in  that  august  lie,  it  were  not  true  in  de- 
tails.” And  in  the  Human  Comedy  he  pro- 
posed to  himself  to  do  for  society  more  than 
Buffon  had  done  for  the  animal  world. 

“There  is  but  one  animal,”  he  declares,  in 
his  Avant-Propos,  with  a confidence  which 
Darwin  has  not  yet  come  to  justify.  But 
“there  exists,  there  will  always  exist,  social 
species,  as  there  are  zoological  species.” 


BALZAC 


15 


“Thus  the  work  to  be  done  will  have  a triple 
form:  men,  women,  and  things;  that  is  to 
say,  human  beings  and  the  material  represen- 
tation which  they  give  to  their  thought;  in 
short,  man  and  life.”  And,  studying  after 
nature,  “French  society  will  be  the  historian, 
I shall  need  to  be  no  more  than  the  secretary.” 
Thus  will  be  written  “the  history  forgotten  by 
so  many  historians,  the  history  of  manners.” 
But  that  is  not  all,  for  “passion  is  the  whole  of 
humanity.”  “In  realizing  clearly  the  drift 
of  the  composition,  it  will  be  seen  that  I assign 
to  facts,  constant,  daily,  open,  or  secret,  to 
the  acts  of  individual  life,  to  their  causes  and 
principles,  as  much  importance  as  historians 
had  formerly  attached  to  the  events  of  the 
public  life  of  nations.”  “Facts  gathered  to- 
gether and  painted  as  they  are,  with  passion 
for  element,”  is  one  of  his  definitions  of  the 
task  he  has  undertaken.  And  in  a letter  to 
Mme.  de  Hanska,  he  summarises  every  detail 
of  his  scheme. 

“The  Etudes  des  Mceurs  will  represent 
social  effects,  without  a single  situation  of 
life,  or  a physiognomy,  or  a character  of  man 
or  woman,  or  a manner  of  life,  or  a profession, 


16 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


or  a social  zone,  or  a district  of  France,  or 
anything  pertaining  to  childhood,  old  age,  or 
maturity,  politics,  justice,  or  war,  having 
been  forgotten. 

“That  laid  down,  the  history  of  the  human 
heart  traced  link  by  link,  the  history  of  society 
made  in  all  its  details,  we  have  the  base.  . . . 

“Then,  the  second  stage  is  the  Etudes  phi- 
losophiques,  for  after  the  effects  come  the  causes. 
In  the  Etudes  des  Mceurs  I shall  have  painted 
the  sentiments  and  their  action,  life  and  the 
fashion  of  life.  In  the  Etudes  philosopliiques 
I shall  say  why  the  sentiments,  on  what  the 
life.  . . . 

“Then,  after  the  effects  and  the  causes, 
come  the  Etudes  analytiques,  to  which  the 
Physiologie  du  manage  belongs,  for,  after  the 
effects  and  the  causes,  one  should  seek  the 
principles.  . . . 

“After  having  done  the  poetry,  the  demon- 
stration, of  a whole  system,  I shall  do  the 
science  in  the  Essai  sur  les  forces  humaines. 
And,  on  the  bases  of  this  palace  I shall  have 
traced  the  immense  arabesque  of  the  Cent 
Contes  drolatiques!” 

Quite  all  that,  as  we  know,  was  not  carried 


BALZAC 


17 


out;  but  there,  in  its  intention,  is  the  plan; 
and  after  twenty  years’  work  the  main  part 
of  it,  certainly,  was  carried  out.  Stated  with 
this  precise  detail,  it  has  something  of  a scien- 
tific air,  as  of  a too  deliberate  attempt  upon 
the  sources  of  life  by  one  of  those  systematic 
French  minds  which  are  so  much  more  logical 
than  facts.  But  there  is  one  little  phrase  to 
be  noted:  “La  passion  est  toute  l’humanit6.” 
All  Balzac  is  in  that  phrase. 

Another  French  novelist,  following,  as  he 
thought,  the  example  of  the  Human  Com- 
edy, has  endeavoured  to  build  up  a history 
of  his  own  time  with  even  greater  minute- 
ness. But  Les  Rougon-Macquart  is  no  more 
than  system;  Zola  has  never  understood  that 
detail  without  life  is  the  wardrobe  without 
the  man.  Trying  to  outdo  Balzac  on  his 
own  ground,  he  has  made  the  fatal  mistake 
of  taking  him  only  on  his  systematic  side, 
which  in  Balzac  is  subordinate  to  a great  crea- 
tive intellect,  an  incessant,  burning  thought 
about  men  and  women,  a passionate  human 
curiosity  for  which  even  his  own  system  has 
no  limits.  “The  misfortune?  of  the  Birotteaus, 
the  priest  and  the  perfumer,”  he  says,  in  his 


18 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Avant-Propos,  taking  an  example  at  random, 
“are,  for  me,  those  of  humanity.”  To  Balzac 
manners  are  but  the  vestment  of  life;  it  is 
life  that  he  seeks;  and  life,  to  him  (it  is  his 
own  word)  is  but  the  vestment  of  thought. 
Thought  is  at  the  root  of  all  his  work,  a 
whole  system  of  thought,  in  which  philosophy 
is  but  another  form  of  poetry;  and  it  is  from 
this  root  of  idea  that  the  Human  Comedy 
springs. 


2 

The  two  books  into  which  Balzac  has  put 
his  deepest  thought,  the  two  books  which  he 
himself  cared  for  the  most,  are  Seraphita 
and  Louis  Lambert.  Of  Louis  Lambert  he 
said:  “I  write  it  for  myself  and  a few 
others”;  of  Seraphita:  “My  life  is  in  it.” 
“One  could  write  Goriot  any  day,”  he  adds; 
“ Seraphita  only  once  in  a lifetime.”  I have 
never  been  able  to  feel  that  Seraphita  is 
altogether  a success.  It  lacks  the  breadth 
of  life;  it  is  glacial.  True,  he  aimed  at  pro- 
ducing very  much  such  an  effect;  and  it  is, 
indeed,  full  of  a strange,  glittering  beauty, 


BALZAC 


19 


the  beauty  of  its  own  snows.  But  I find  in 
it  at  the  same  time  something  a little  facti- 
tious, a sort  of  romanesque,  not  altogether 
unlike  the  sentimental  romanesque  of  Novalis; 
it  has  not  done  the  impossible,  in  humanis- 
ing abstract  speculation,  in  fusing  mysticism 
and  the  novel.  But  for  the  student  of  Balzac 
it  has  extraordinary  interest;  for  it  is  at  once 
the  base  and  the  summit  of  the  Human  Com- 
edy. In  a letter  to  Mme.  de  Hanska,  written 
in  1837,  four  years  after  Seraphita  had  been 
begun,  he  writes:  “I  am  not  orthodox,  and  I 
do  not  believe  in  the  Roman  Church.  Swe- 
denborgianism,  which  is  but  a repetition,  in 
the  Christian  sense,  of  ancient  ideas,  is  my 
religion,  with  this  addition:  that  I believe  in 
the  incomprehensibility  of  God.”  Sera- 
phita is  a prose  poem  in  which  the  most 
abstract  part  of  that  mystical  system,  which 
Swedenborg  perhaps  materialised  too  crudely, 
is  presented  in  a white  light,  under  a single, 
superhuman  image.  In  Louis  Lambert  the 
same  fundamental  conceptions  are  worked 
out  in  the  study  of  a perfectly  human  intel- 
lect, "an  intelligent  gulf,”  as  he  truly  calls 
it;  a sober  and  concise  history  of  ideas  in  their 


20 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


devouring  action  upon  a feeble  physical  nature. 
In  these  two  books  we  see  directly,  and  not 
through  the  coloured  veil  of  human  life,  the 
mind  in  the  abstract  of  a thinker  whose  power 
over  humanity  was  the  power  of  abstract 
thought.  They  show  this  novelist,  who  has 
invented  the  description  of  society,  by  whom 
the  visible  world  has  been  more  powerfully 
felt  than  by  any  other  novelist,  striving  to 
penetrate  the  correspondences  which  exist 
between  the  human  and  the  celestial  exist- 
ence. He  would  pursue  the  soul  to  its  last 
resting-place  before  it  takes  flight  from  the 
body;  further,  on  its  disembodied  flight;  he 
would  find  out  God,  as  he  comes  nearer  and 
nearer  to  finding  out  the  secret  of  life.  And 
realising,  as  he  does  so  profoundly,  that  there 
is  but  one  substance,  but  one  ever-changing 
principle  of  life,  “one  vegetable,  one  animal, 
but  a continual  intercourse,”  the  world  is 
alive  with  meaning  for  him,  a more  intimate 
meaning  than  it  has  for  others.  “The  least 
flower  is  a thought,  a life  which  corresponds 
to  some  lineaments  of  the  great  whole,  of  which 
he  has  the  constant  intuition.”  And  so,  in 
his  concerns  with  the  world,  he  will  find  spirit 


BALZAC 


21 


everywhere;  nothing  for  him  will  be  inert 
matter,  everything  will  have  its  particle 
of  the  universal  life.  One  of  those  divine 
spies,  for  whom  the  world  has  no  secrets,  he 
will  be  neither  pessimist  nor  optimist;  he  will 
accept  the  world  as  a man  accepts  the  woman 
whom  he  loves,  as  much  for  her  defects  as  for 
her  virtues.  Loving  the  world  for  its  own 
sake,  he  will  find  it  always  beautiful,  equally 
beautiful  in  all  its  parts.  Now  let  us  look  at 
the  programme  which  he  traced  for  the 
Human  Comedy,  let  us  realise  it  in  the  light 
of  this  philosophy,  and  we  are  at  the  begin- 
ning of  a conception  of  what  the  Human 
Comedy  really  is. 


3 

This  visionary,  then,  who  had  apprehended 
for  himself  an  idea  of  God,  set  himself  to 
interpret  human  life  more  elaborately  than 
any  one  else.  He  has  been  praised  for  his 
patient  observation;  people  have  thought 
they  praised  him  in  calling  him  a realist; 
it  has  been  discussed  how  far  his  imitation  of 
life  was  the  literal  truth  of  the  photograph. 


22 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


But  to  Balzac  the  word  realism  was  an  insult. 
Writing  his  novels  at  the  rate  of  eighteen  hours 
a day,  in  a feverish  solitude,  he  never  had  the 
time  to  observe  patiently.  It  is  humanity 
seen  in  a mirror,  the  humanity  which  comes 
to  the  great  dreamers,  the  great  poets,  human- 
ity as  Shakespeare  saw  it.  And  so  in  him, 
as  in  all  the  great  artists,  there  is  something 
more  than  nature,  a divine  excess.  This 
something  more  than  nature  should  be  the  aim 
of  the  artist,  not  merely  the  accident  which 
happens  to  him  against  his  will.  We  require 
of  him  a world  like  our  own,  but  a world 
infinitely  more  vigorous,  interesting,  profound ; 
more  beautiful  with  that  kind  of  beauty 
which  nature  finds  of  itself  for  art.  It  is  the 
quality  of  great  creative  art  to  give  us  so 
much  life  that  we  are  almost  overpowered  by 
it,  as  by  an  air  almost  too  vigorous  to  breathe : 
the  exuberance  of  creation  which  makes  the 
Sibyl  of  Michelangelo  something  more  than 
human,  which  makes  Lear  something  more 
than  human,  in  one  kind  or  another  of  divinity. 

Balzac’s  novels  are  full  of  strange  problems 
and  great  passions.  He  turned  aside  from 
nothing  which  presented  itself  in  nature;  and 


BALZAC 


23 


his  mind  was  always  turbulent  with  the  mag- 
nificent contrasts  and  caprices  of  fate.  A de- 
vouring passion  of  thought  burned  on  all 
the  situations  by  which  humanity  expresses 
itself,  in  its  flight  from  the  horror  of  immo- 
bility. To  say  that  the  situations  which  he 
chose  are  often  romantic  is  but  to  say  that  he 
followed  the  soul  and  the  senses  faithfully  on 
their  strangest  errands.  Our  probable  novelists 
of  to-day  are  afraid  of  whatever  emotion  might 
be  misinterpreted  in  a gentleman.  Believing, 
as  we  do  now,  in  nerves  and  a fatalistic  hered- 
ity, we  have  left  but  little  room  for  the  dignity 
and  disturbance  of  violent  emotion.  To  Bal- 
zac, humanity  had  not  changed  since  the  days 
when  CEdipus  was  blind  and  Philoctetes  cried 
in  the  cave;  and  equally  great  miseries  were 
still  possible  to  mortals,  though  they  were 
French  and  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

And  thus  he  creates,  like  the  poets,  a human- 
ity more  logical  than  average  life;  more  typical, 
more  sub-divided  among  the  passions,  and 
having  in  its  veins  an  energy  almost  more  than 
human.  He  realised,  as  the  Greeks  did,  that 
human  life  is  made  up  of  elemental  passions 
and  necessity;  but  he  was  the  first  to  realise 


24 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


that  in  the  modern  world  the  pseudonym  of 
necessity  is  money.  Money  and  the  passions 
rule  the  world  of  his  Human  Comedy. 

And,  at  the  root  of  the  passions,  determining 
their  action,  he  saw  “those  nervous  fluids,  or 
that  unknown  substance  which,  in  default  of 
another  term,  we  must  call  the  will.”  No 
word  returns  oftener  to  his  pen.  For  him 
the  problem  is  invariable.  Man  has  a given 
quantity  of  energy;  each  man  a different  quan- 
tity: how  will  he  spend  it?  A novel  is  the 
determination  in  action  of  that  problem.  And 
he  is  equally  interested  in  every  form  of  energy, 
in  every  egoism,  so  long  as  it  is  fiercely  itself. 
This  pre-occupation  with  the  force,  rather 
than  with  any  of  its  manifestations,  gives  him 
his  singular  impartiality,  his  absolute  lack  of 
prejudice;  for  it  gives  him  the  advantage  of 
an  abstract  point  of  view,  the  unchanging  ful- 
crum for  a lever  which  turns  in  every  direction; 
and  as  nothing  once  set  vividly  in  motion  by 
any  form  of  human  activity  is  without  interest 
for  him,  he  makes  every  point  of  his  vast  chron- 
icle of  human  affairs  equally  interesting  to  his 
readers. 

Baudelaire  has  observed  profoundly  that 


BALZAC 


25 


every  character  in  the  Human  Comedy  has 
something  of  Balzac,  has  genius.  To  him- 
self, his  own  genius  was  entirely  expressed  in 
that  word  “will.”  It  recurs  constantly  in  his 
letters.  “Men  of  will  are  rare!”  he  cries. 
And,  at  a time  when  he  had  turned  night  into 
day  for  his  labour:  “I  rise  every  night  with  a 
keener  will  than  that  of  yesterday.”  “Noth- 
ing wearies  me,”  he  says,  “neither  waiting  nor 
happiness.”  He  exhausts  the  printers,  whose 
fingers  can  hardly  keep  pace  with  his  brain; 
they  call  him,  he  reports  proudly,  “a  man- 
slayer.”  And  he  tries  to  express  himself:  “I 
have  always  had  in  me  something,  I know  not 
what,  which  made  me  do  differently  from 
others;  and,  with  me,  fidelity  is  perhaps  no 
more  than  pride.  Having  only  myself  to  rely 
upon,  I have  had  to  strengthen,  to  build  up 
that  self.”  There  is  a scene  in  La  Cousine 
Bette  which  gives  precisely  Balzac’s  own  sen- 
timent of  the  supreme  value  of  energy.  The 
Baron  Hulot,  ruined  on  every  side,  and  by 
his  own  fault,  goes  to  Jos6pha,  a mistress  who 
had  cast  him  off  in  the  time  of  his  prosperity,  and 
asks  her  to  lodge  him  for  a few  days  in  a garret. 
She  laughs,  pities,  and  then  questions  him. 


26 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


“‘Est-ce  vrai,  vieux,’  reprit-elle,  ‘que  tu  as 
tue  ton  frere  et  ton  oncle,  ruine  ta  famille, 
surhypotheque  la  maison  de  tes  enfants  et 
mange  la  grenouille  du  gouvernement  en 
Afrique  avec  la  princesse?’ 

“Le  Baron  inclina  tristement  la  tete. 

“‘Eh  bien,  j’aime  cela!’  s’ecria  Jos6pha,  qui 
se  leva  pleine  d’enthousiasme.  ‘C’est  un  bru- 
lage  general!  c’est  sardanapale!  c’est  grand! 
c’est  complet!  On  est  une  canaille,  mais  on  a 
du  coeur.’” 

The  cry  is  Balzac’s,  and  it  is  a characteristic 
part  of  his  genius  to  have  given  it  that  ironical 
force  by  uttering  it  through  the  mouth  of  a 
Josepha.  The  joy  of  the  human  organism  at 
its  highest  point  of  activity:  that  is  what 
interests  him  supremely.  How  passionate, 
how  moving  he  becomes  whenever  he  has  to 
speak  of  a real  passion,  a mania,  whether  of  a 
lover  for  his  mistress,  of  a philosopher  for  his 
idea,  of  a miser  for  his  gold,  of  a Jew  dealer 
for  masterpieces!  His  style  clarifies,  his  words 
become  flesh  and  blood;  he  is  the  lyric  poet. 
And  for  him  every  idealism  is  equal:  the  gour- 
mandise  of  Pons  is  not  less  serious,  nor  less 
sympathetic,  not  less  perfectly  realised,  than 


BALZAC 


27 


the  search  of  Claes  after  the  Absolute.  “The 
great  and  terrible  clamour  of  egoism”  is  the 
voice  to  which  he  is  always  attentive;  “those 
eloquent  faces,  proclaiming  a soul  abandoned 
to  an  idea  as  to  a remorse,”  are  the  faces  with 
whose  history  he  concerns  himself.  He  drags 
to  light  the  hidden  joys  of  the  amateur,  and 
with  especial  delight  those  that  are  hidden 
deepest,  under  the  most  deceptive  coverings. 
He  deifies  them  for  their  energy,  he  fashions 
the  world  of  his  Human  Comedy  in  their 
service,  as  the  real  world  exists,  all  but 
passive,  to  be  the  pasture  of  these  supreme 
egoists. 


4 

In  all  that  he  writes  of  life,  Balzac  seeks  the 
soul,  but  it  is  the  soul  as  nervous  fluid,  the 
executive  soul,  not  the  contemplative  soul, 
that,  with  rare  exceptions,  he  seeks.  He  would 
surprise  the  motive  force  of  life:  that  is  his 
recherche  de  I’Absolu;  he  figures  it  to  himself 
as  almost  a substance,  and  he  is  the  alchemist 
on  its  track.  “Can  man  by  thinking  find  out 
God?”  Or  life,  he  would  have  added;  and 


28 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


he  would  have  answered  the  question  with  at 
least  a Perhaps. 

And  of  this  visionary,  this  abstract  thinker, 
it  must  be  said  that  his  thought  translates 
itself  always  into  terms  of  life.  Pose  before 
him  a purely  mental  problem,  and  he  will 
resolve  it  by  a scene  in  which  the  problem 
literally  works  itself  out.  It  is  the  quality 
proper  to  the  novelist,  but  no  novelist  ever 
employed  this  quality  with  such  persistent 
activity,  and  at  the  same  time  subordinated 
action  so  constantly  to  the  idea.  With  him 
action  has  always  a mental  basis,  is  never  suf- 
fered to  intrude  for  its  own  sake.  He  prefers 
that  an  episode  should  seem  in  itself  tedious 
rather  than  it  should  have  an  illogical  interest. 

It  may  be,  for  he  is  a Frenchman,  that  his 
episodes  are  sometimes  too  logical.  There  are 
moments  when  he  becomes  unreal  because  he 
wishes  to  be  too  systematic,  that  is,  to  be  real 
by  measure.  He  wrould  never  have  under- 
stood the  method  of  Tolstoi,  a very  stealthy 
method  of  surprising  life.  To  Tolstoi  life  is 
always  the  cunning  enemy  whom  one  must  lull 
asleep,  or  noose  by  an  unexpected  lasso.  He 
brings  in  little  detail  after  little  detail,  seeming 


BALZAC 


29 


to  insist  on  the  insignificance  of  each,  in  order 
that  it  may  pass  almost  unobserved,  and 
be  realised  only  after  it  has  passed.  It  is  his 
way  of  disarming  the  suspiciousness  of  life. 

But  Balzac  will  make  no  circuit,  aims  at  an 
open  and  an  unconditional  triumph  over 
nature.  Thus,  when  he  triumphs,  he  triumphs 
signally;  and  action,  in  his  books,  is  perpet- 
ually crystallising  into  some  phrase,  like  the 
single  lines  of  Dante,  or  some  brief  scene,  in 
which  a whole  entanglement  comes  sharply 
and  suddenly  to  a luminous  point.  I will  give 
no  instance,  for  I should  have  to  quote  from 
every  volume.  I wish  rather  to  remind  myself 
that  there  are  times  when  the  last  fine  shade  of 
a situation  seems  to  have  escaped.  Even 
then,  the  failure  is  often  more  apparent  than 
real,  a slight  bungling  in  the  machinery  of 
illusion.  Look  through  the  phrase,  and  you 
will  find  the  truth  there,  perfectly  explicit  on 
the  other  side  of  it. 

For  it  cannot  be  denied,  Balzac’s  style,  as 
style,  is  imperfect.  It  has  life,  and  it  has  an 
idea,  and  it  has  variety;  there  are  moments 
when  it  attains  a rare  and  perfectly  individ- 
ual beauty;  as  when,  in  Le  Cousin  Pons,  we 


30 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


read  of  “cette  predisposition  aux  recherches 
qui  fait  faire  a un  savant  germanique  cent 
lieues  dans  ses  guetres  pour  trouver  une 
verity  qui  le  regard  en  riant,  assise  a la  marge 
du  puits,  sous  le  jasmin  de  la  cour.”  But  I 
am  far  less  sure  that  a student  of  Balzac  would 
recognise  him  in  this  sentence  than  that  he 
would  recognise  the  writer  of  this  other:  “Des 
larmes  de  pudeur,  qui  roulerent  entre  les  beaux 
cils  de  Madame  Hulot,  arreterent  net  le  garde 
national.”  It  is  in  such  passages  that  the 
failure  in  style  is  equivalent  to  a failure  in 
psychology.  That  his  style  should  lack  sym- 
metry, subordination,  the  formal  virtues  of 
form,  is,  in  my  eyes,  a less  serious  fault.  I 
have  often  considered  whether,  in  the  novel, 
perfect  form  is  a good,  or  even  a possible  thing, 
if  the  novel  is  to  be  what  Balzac  made  it,  his- 
tory added  to  poetry.  A novelist  with  style 
will  not  look  at  life  with  an  entirely  naked 
vision.  He  sees  through  coloured  glasses. 
Human  life  and  human  manners  are  too  various, 
too  moving,  to  be  brought  into  the  fixity  of  a 
quite  formal  order.  There  will  come  a mo- 
ment, constantly,  wrhen  style  must  suffer,  or 
the  closeness  and  clearness  of  narration  must 


BALZAC 


31 


be  sacrificed,  some  minute  exception  of  action 
or  psychology  must  lose  its  natural  place,  or  its 
full  emphasis.  Balzac,  with  his  rapid  and 
accumulating  mind,  without  the  patience  of 
selection,  and  without  the  desire  to  select 
where  selection  means  leaving  out  something 
good  in  itself,  if  not  good  in  its  place,  never 
hesitates,  and  his  parenthesis  comes  in.  And 
often  it  is  into  these  parentheses  that  he  puts 
the  profoundest  part  of  his  thought. 

Yet,  ready  as  Balzac  is  to  neglect  the  story 
for  the  philosophy,  whenever  it  seems  to  him 
necessary  to  do  so,  he  would  never  have  ad- 
mitted that  a form  of  the  novel  is  possible  in 
which  the  story  shall  be  no  more  than  an  ex- 
cuse for  the  philosophy.  That  was  because 
he  was  a great  creator,  and  not  merely  a 
philosophical  thinker;  because  he  dealt  in 
flesh  and  blood,  and  knew  that  the  passions 
in  action  can  teach  more  to  the  philosopher, 
and  can  justify  the  artist  more  fully,  than 
all  the  unacting  intellect  in  the  world.  He 
knew  that  though  life  without  thought  was 
no  more  than  the  portion  of  a dog,  yet  thought- 
ful life  was  more  than  lifeless  thought,  and  the 
dramatist  more  than  the  commentator.  And 


32 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


I cannot  help  feeling  assured  that  the  latest 
novelists  without  a story,  whatever  other 
merits  they  certainly  have,  are  lacking  in  the 
power  to  create  characters,  to  express  a philos- 
ophy in  action;  and  that  the  form  which  they 
have  found,  however  valuable  it  may  be,  is 
the  result  of  this  failure,  and  not  either  a 
great  refusal  or  a new  vision. 

5 

The  novel  as  Balzac  conceived  it  has  created 
the  modern  novel,  but  no  modern  novelist 
has  followed,  for  none  has  been  able  to  follow, 
Balzac  on  his  own  lines.  Even  those  who  have 
tried  to  follow  him  most  closely  have,  sooner 
or  later,  branched  off  in  one  direction  or 
another,  most  in  the  direction  indicated  by 
Stendhal.  Stendhal  has  written  one  book 
which  is  a masterpiece,  unique  in  its  kind, 
Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir;  a second,  which  is 
full  of  admirable  things,  Le  Chartreuse  de 
Parme;  a book  of  profound  criticism,  Racine 
et  Shakspeare;  and  a cold  and  penetrating 
study  of  the  physiology  of  love,  De  V Amour, 
by  the  side  of  wdiich  Balzac’s  Physiologic  du 


BALZAC 


33 


Mariage  is  a mere  jeu  d’ esprit.  He  discov- 
ered for  himself,  and  for  others  after  him, 
a method  of  unemotional,  minute,  slightly 
ironical  analysis,  which  has  fascinated  modern 
minds,  partly  because  it  has  seemed  to  dis- 
pense with  those  difficulties  of  creation,  of 
creation  in  the  block,  which  the  triumphs  of 
Balzac  have  only  accentuated.  Goriot,  Va- 
lerie Marneffe,  Pons,  Grandet,  Madame  de 
Mortsauf  even,  are  called  up  before  us  after 
the  same  manner  as  Othello  or  Don  Quixote; 
their  actions  express  them  so  significantly  that 
they  seem  to  be  independent  of  their  creator; 
Balzac  stakes  all  upon  each  creation,  and 
leaves  us  no  choice  but  to  accept  or  reject  each 
as  a whole,  precisely  as  we  should  a human 
being.  We  do  not  know  all  the  secrets  of 
their  consciousness,  any  more  than  we  know 
all  the  secrets  of  the  consciousness  of  our 
friends.  But  we  have  only  so  say  “Vaffirie!” 
and  the  woman  is  before  us.  Stendhal,  on 
the  contrary,  undresses  Julien’s  soul  in  public 
with  a deliberate  and  fascinating  effrontery. 
There  is  not  a vein  of  which  he  does  not  trace 
the  course,  not  a wrinkle  to  which  he  does  not 
point,  not  a nerve  which  he  does  not  touch  to 


34 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  quick.  We  know  everything  that  passed 
through  his  mind,  to  result  probably  in  some 
significant  inaction.  And  at  the  end  of  the 
book  we  know  as  much  about  that  particular 
intelligence  as  the  anatomist  knows  about 
the  body  which  he  has  dissected.  But  mean- 
while the  life  has  gone  out  of  the  body;  and 
have  we,  after  all,  captured  a living 
soul? 

I should  be  the  last  to  say  that  Julien  Sorel 
is  not  a creation,  but  he  is  not  a creation  after 
the  order  of  Balzac;  it  is  a difference  of  kind; 
and  if  we  look  carefully  at  Fr6d4ric  Moreau, 
and  Madame  Gervaisais,  and  the  Abbe  Mouret, 
we  shall  see  that  these  also,  profoundly  differ- 
ent as  Flaubert  and  Goncourt  and  Zola  are 
from  Stendhal,  are  yet  more  profoundly,  more 
radically,  different  from  the  creations  of  Bal- 
zac. Balzac  takes  a primary  passion,  puts 
it  into  a human  body,  and  sets  it  to  work 
itself  out  in  visible  action.  But  since  Stendhal, 
novelists  have  persuaded  themselves  that  the 
primary  passions  are  a little  common,  or  noisy, 
or  a little  heavy  to  handle,  and  they  have 
concerned  themselves  with  passions  tempered 
by  reflection,  and  the  sensations  of  elaborate 


BALZAC 


35 


brains.  It  was  Stendhal  who  substituted 
the  brain  for  the  heart,  as  the  battle-place  of 
the  novel;  not  the  brain  as  Balzac  conceived 
it,  a motive-force  of  action,  the  mainspring 
of  passion,  the  force  by  which  a nature  directs 
its  accumulated  energy;  but  a sterile  sort 
of  brain,  set  at  a great  distance  from  the  heart, 
whose  rhythm  is  too  faint  to  disturb  it.  We 
have  been  intellectualising  upon  Stendhal 
ever  since,  until  the  persons  of  the  modern 
novel  have  come  to  resemble  those  diaphanous 
jelly-fish,  with  balloon-like  heads  and  the 
merest  tufts  of  bodies,  which  float  up  and  down 
in  the  Aquarium  at  Naples. 

Thus,  coming  closer,  as  it  seems,  to  what  is 
called  reality,  in  this  banishment  of  great 
emotions,  and  this  attention  upon  the  sensa- 
tions, modern  analytic  novelists  are  really 
getting  further  and  further  from  that  life 
which  is  the  one  certain  thing  in  the  world. 
Balzac  employs  all  his  detail  to  call  up  a 
tangible  world  about  his  men  and  women, 
not,  perhaps,  understanding  the  full  power  of 
detail  as  psychology,  as  Flaubert  is  to  under- 
stand it;  but,  after  all,  his  detail  is  only  the 
background  of  the  picture;  and  there,  step- 


36 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


ping  out  of  the  canvas,  as  the  sombre  people 
of  Velazquez  step  out  of  their  canvases  at  the 
Prado,  is  the  living  figure,  looking  into  your 
eyes  with  eyes  that  respond  to  you  like  a 
mirror. 

The  novels  of  Balzac  are  full  of  electric  fluid. 
To  take  up  one  of  them  is  to  feel  the  shock 
of  life,  as  one  feels  it  on  touching  certain  mag- 
netic hands.  To  turn  over  volume  after  vol- 
ume is  like  wandering  through  the  streets  of  a 
great  city,  at  that  hour  of  the  night  when 
human  activity  is  at  its  full.  There  is  a par- 
ticular kind  of  excitement  inherent  in  the  very 
aspect  of  a modern  city,  of  London  or  Paris; 
in  the  mere  sensation  of  being  in  its  midst, 
in  the  sight  of  all  those  active  and  fatigued 
faces  which  pass  so  rapidly;  of  those  long  and 
endless  streets,  full  of  houses,  each  of  which  is 
like  the  body  of  a multiform  soul,  looking  out 
through  the  eyes  of  many  windows.  There 
is  something  intoxicating  in  the  lights,  the 
movement  of  shadows  under  the  fights,  the 
vast  and  billowy  sound  of  that  shadowy 
movement.  And  there  is  something  more  than 
this  mere  unconscious  action  upon  the  nerves. 
Every  step  in  a great  city  is  a step  into  an 


BALZAC 


37 


unknown  world.  A new  future  is  possible 
at  every  street  corner.  I never  know,  when 
I go  out  into  one  of  those  crowded  streets, 
but  that  the  whole  course  of  my  life  may  be 
changed  before  I return  to  the  house  I have 
quitted. 

I am  writing  these  lines  in  Madrid,  to  which 
I have  come  suddenly,  after  a long  quiet  in 
Andalusia;  and  I feel  already  a new  pulse  in 
my  blood,  a keener  consciousness  of  life,  and  a 
sharper  human  curiosity.  Even  in  Seville  I 
knew  that  I should  see  to-morrow,  in  the 
same  streets,  hardly  changed  since  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  same  people  that  I had  seen  to-day. 
But  here  there  are  new  possibilities,  all  the 
exciting  accidents  of  the  modern  world,  of  a 
population  always  changing,  of  a city  into 
which  civilisation  has  brought  all  its  unrest. 
And  as  I walk  in  these  broad,  windy  streets 
and  see  these  people,  whom  I hardly  recog- 
nise for  Spaniards,  so  awake  and  so  hybrid 
are  they,  I have  felt  the  sense  of  Balzac  com- 
ing back  into  my  veins.  At  Cordova  he  was 
unthinkable;  at  Cadiz  I could  realise  only 
his  large,  universal  outlines,  vague  as  the 
murmur  of  the  sea;  here  I feel  him,  he  speaks 


38 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  language  I am  talking,  he  sums  up  the  life 
in  whose  midst  I find  myself. 

For  Balzac  is  the  equivalent  of  great  cities. 
He  is  bad  reading  for  solitude,  for  he  fills  the 
mind  with  the  nostalgia  of  cities.  When  a 
man  speaks  to  me  familiarly  of  Balzac  I know 
already  something  of  the  man  with  whom  I 
have  to  do.  “The  physiognomy  of  women 
does  not  begin  before  the  age  of  thirty,”  he 
has  said;  and  perhaps  before  that  age  no  one 
can  Really  understand  Balzac.  Few  young 
people  care  for  him,  for  there  is  nothing  in 
him  that  appeals  to  the  senses  except  through 
the  intellect.  Not  many  women  care  for  him 
supremely,  for  it  is  part  of  his  method  to 
express  sentiments  through  facts,  and  not 
facts  through  sentiments.  But  it  is  natural 
that  he  should  be  the  favourite  reading  of 
men  of  the  world,  of  those  men  of  the  world 
who  have  the  distinction  of  their  kind;  for 
he  supplies  the  key  of  the  enigma  which  they 
are  studying. 


BALZAC 


39 


6 

The  life  of  Balzac  was  one  long  labour,  in 
which  time,  money,  and  circumstances  were  all 
against  him.  In  1835  he  writes : “I  have  lately 
spent  twenty-six  days  in  my  study  without 
leaving  it.  I took  the  air  only  at  that  window 
which  dominates  Paris,  which  I mean  to  domi- 
nate.” And  he  exults  in  the  labour:  “If 
there  is  any  glory  in  that,  I alone  could  accom- 
plish such  a feat.”  He  symbolises  the  course 
of  his  life  in  comparing  it  to  the  sea  beating 
against  a rock:  “To-day  one  flood,  to-morrow 
another,  bears  me  along  with  it.  I am  dashed 
against  a rock,  I recover  myself  and  go  on 
to  another  reef.”  “Sometimes  it  seems  to  me 
that  my  brain  is  on  fire.  I shall  die  in  the 
trenches  of  the  intellect.” 

Balzac,  like  Scott,  died  under  the  weight  of 
his  debts;  and  it  would  seem,  if  one  took 
him  at  his  word,  that  the  whole  of  the  Human 
Comedy  was  written  for  money.  In  the 
modern  world,  as  he  himself  realised  more 
clearly  than  any  one,  money  is  more  often  a 
symbol  than  an  entity,  and  it  can  be  the  symbol 
of  every  desire.  For  Balzac  money  was  the 


40 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


key  of  his  earthly  paradise.  It  meant  leisure 
to  visit  the  woman  whom  he  loved,  and  at  the 
end  it  meant  the  possibility  of  marrying  her. 

There  were  only  two  women  in  Balzac’s  life: 
one,  a woman  much  older  than  himself,  of 
whom  he  wrote,  on  her  death,  to  the  other: 
“She  was  a mother,  a friend,  a family,  a com- 
panion, a counsel,  she  made  the  writer,  she 
consoled  the  young  man,  she  formed  his  taste, 
she  wept  like  a sister,  she  laughed,  she  came 
every  day,  like  a healing  slumber,  to  put  sorrow 
to  sleep.”  The  other  was  Mme.  de  Hanska, 
whom  he  married  in  1850,  three  months  before 
his  death.  He  had  loved  her  for  twenty  years; 
she  was  married,  and  lived  in  Poland;  it  was 
only  at  rare  intervals  that  he  was  able  to  see 
her,  and  then  very  briefly;  but  his  letters  to 
her,  published  since  his  death,  are  a simple, 
perfectly  individual,  daily  record  of  a great 
passion.  For  twenty  years  he  existed  on  a 
divine  certainty  without  a future,  and  almost 
without  a present.  But  we  see  the  force  of 
that  sentiment  passing  into  his  work;  Sera- 
phita  is  its  ecstasy,  everywhere  is  its  human 
shadow;  it  refines  his  strength,  it  gives  him 
surprising  intuitions,  it  gives  him  all  that  was 


BALZAC 


41 


wanting  to  his  genius.  Mme.  de  Hanska  is 
the  heroine  of  the  Human  Comedy,  as 
Beatrice  is  the  heroine  of  the  Divine  Com- 
edy. 

A great  lover,  to  whom  love,  as  well  as 
every  other  passion  and  the  whole  visible 
world,  was  an  idea,  a flaming  spiritual  percep- 
tion, Balzac  enjoyed  the  vast  happiness  of  the 
idealist.  Contentedly,  joyously,  he  sacrificed 
every  petty  enjoyment  to  the  idea  of  love,  the 
idea  of  fame,  and  to  that  need  of  the  organism 
to  exercise  its  forces,  which  is  the  only  defini- 
tion of  genius.  I do  not  know,  among  the 
lives  of  men  of  letters,  a life  better  filled,  or 
more  appropriate.  A young  man  who,  for  a 
short  time,  was  his  secretary,  declared:  “I 
would  not  live  your  life  for  the  fame  of  Napo- 
leon and  of  Byron  combined !”  The  Comte 
de  Gramont  did  not  realise,  as  the  world  in 
general  does  not  realise,  that,  to  the  man  of 
creative  energy,  creation  is  at  once  a necessity 
and  a joy,  and  to  the  lover,  hope  in  absence  is 
the  elixir  of  life.  Balzac  tasted  more  than  all 
earthly  pleasures  as  he  sat  there  in  his  attic, 
creating  the  world  over  again,  that  he  might 
lay  it  at  the  feet  of  a woman.  Certainly  to 


42 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


him  there  was  no  tedium  in  life,  for  there  was 
no  hour  without  its  vivid  employment,  and  no 
moment  in  which  to  perceive  the  most  desolate 
of  all  certainties,  that  hope  is  in  the  past.  His 
death  was  as  fortunate  as  his  life;  he  died  at 
the  height  of  his  powers,  at  the  height  of  his 
fame,  at  the  moment  of  the  fulfilment  of  his 
happiness,  and  perhaps  of  the  too  sudden  relief 
of  that  delicate  burden. 

1899. 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 


1 

Stendhal  has  left  us  a picture  of  M6rim6e 
as  “a  young  man  in  a grey  frock-coat,  very 
ugly,  and  with  a turned-up  nose.  . . . This 
young  man  had  something  insolent  and  ex- 
tremely unpleasant  about  him.  His  eyes, 
small  and  without  expression,  had  always  the 
same  look,  and  this  look  was  ill-natured.  . . . 
Such  was  my  first  impression  of  the  best  of  my 
present  friends.  I am  not  too  sure  of  his  heart, 
but  I am  sure  of  his  talents.  It  is  M.  le  Comte 
Gazul,  now  so  well  known;  a letter  from  him, 
which  came  to  me  last  week,  made  me  happy 
for  two  days.  His  mother  has  a good  deal  of 
French  wit  and  a superior  intelligence.  Like 
her  son,  it  seems  to  me  that  she  might  give 
way  to  emotion  once  a year.”  There,  painted 
by  a clear-sighted  and  disinterested  friend,  is  a 
picture  of  M6rim6e  almost  from  his  own  point 

43 


44 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


of  view,  or  at  least  as  he  would  himself  have 
painted  the  picture.  How  far  is  it,  in  its  in- 
sistence on  the  attendrissement  une  fois  par  an, 
on  the  subordination  of  natural  feelings  to  a 
somewhat  disdainful  aloofness,  the  real  M6ri- 
m6e? 

Early  in  life,  Merim6e  adopted  his  theory, 
fixed  his  attitude,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life 
he  seemed,  to  those  about  him,  to  have  walked 
along  the  path  he  had  chosen,  almost  without 
a deviation.  He  went  to  England  at  the  age 
of  twenty-three,  to  Spain  four  years  later,  and 
might  seem  to  have  been  drawn  naturally  to 
those  two  countries,  to  which  he  was  to  return 
so  often,  by  natural  affinities  of  temper  and 
manner.  It  was  the  English  manner  that  he 
liked,  that  came  naturally  to  him ; the  correct, 
unmoved  exterior,  winch  is  a kind  of  positive 
strength,  not  to  be  broken  by  any  onslaught 
of  events  or  emotions;  and  in  Spain  he  found 
an  equally  positive  animal  acceptance  of  things 
as  they  are,  wdiich  satisfied  his  profound,  re- 
strained, really  Pagan  senusality,  Pagan  in  the 
hard,  eighteenth-century  sense.  From  the 
beginning  he  w7as  a student,  of  art,  of  history, 
of  human  nature,  and  we  find  him  enjojdng,  in 


PROSPER  M£RIMEE 


45 


his  deliberate,  keen  way,  the  studied  diversions 
of  the  student;  body  and  soul  each  kept  exactly 
in  its  place,  each  provided  for  without  par- 
tiality. He  entered  upon  literature  by  a mys- 
tification, Le  Theatre  de  Clara  Gazul,  a book 
of  plays  supposed  to  be  translated  from  a 
living  Spanish  dramatist;  and  he  followed  it  by 
La  Guzla,  another  mystification,  a book  of 
prose  ballads  supposed  to  be  translated  from 
the  Illyrian.  And  these  mystifications,  like  the 
forgeries  of  Chatterton,  contain  perhaps  the 
most  sincere,  the  most  undisguised  emotion 
wThich  he  ever  permitted  himself  to  express; 
so  secure  did  he  feel  of  the  heart  behind  the 
pearl  necklace  of  the  decollelee  Spanish  actress, 
who  travesties  his  own  face  in  the  frontispiece 
to  the  one,  and  so  remote  from  himself  did  he 
feel  the  bearded  gentleman  to  be,  who  sits 
cross-legged  on  the  ground,  holding  his  lyre  or 
guzla,  in  the  frontispiece  to  the  other.  Then 
came  a historical  novel,  the  Chronique  du 
Regne  de  Charles  IX.,  before  he  discovered, 
as  if  by  accident,  precisely  what  it  was  he  was 
meant  to  do : the  short  story.  Then  he  drifted 
into  history,  became  Inspector  of  Ancient 
Monuments,  and  helped  to  save  Vezelay, 


46 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


among  other  good  deeds  toward  art,  done  in 
his  cold,  systematic,  after  all  satisfactory  man- 
ner. He  travelled  at  almost  regular  intervals, 
not  only  in  Spain  and  England,  but  in  Corsica, 
in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor,  in  Italy,  in  Hun- 
gary, in  Bohemia,  usually  with  a definite, 
scholarly  object,  and  always  with  an  alert 
attention  to  everything  that  came  in  his  way, 
to  the  manners  of  people,  their  national  char- 
acters, their  differences  from  one  another. 
An  intimate  friend  of  the  Countess  de  Montijo, 
the  mother  of  the  Empress  Eugenie,  he  was  a 
friend,  not  a courtier,  at  the  court  of  the  Third 
Empire.  He  was  elected  to  the  Academy, 
mainly  for  his  Etudes  sur  VHistoire  Ro- 
maine,  a piece  of  dry  history,  and  immediately 
scandalised  his  supporters  by  publishing  a 
story,  Arsene  Guillot,  which  was  taken  for  a 
veiled  attack  on  religion  and  on  morals.  Soon 
after,  his  imagination  seemed  to  flag;  he 
abandoned  himself,  perhaps  a little  wearily, 
more  and  more  to  facts,  to  the  facts  of  history 
and  learning;  learned  Russian,  and  trans- 
lated Poushkin  and  Tourguenieff;  and  died  in 
1870,  at  Cannes,  perhaps  less  satisfied  with 
himself  than  most  men  who  have  done,  in  their 


PROSPER  M£RIMEE 


47 


lives,  far  less  exactly  what  they  have  intended 
to  do. 

“I  have  theories  about  the  very  smallest 
things — gloves,  boots,  and  the  like,”  says 
Merim4e  in  one  of  his  letters;  des  idees  tres- 
arretees,  as  he  adds  with  emphasis  in  another. 
Precise  opinions  lead  easily  to  prejudices,  and 
Merim4e,  who  prided  himself  on  the  really 
very  logical  quality  of  his  mind,  put  himself 
somewhat  deliberately  into  the  hands  of  his 
prejudices.  Thus  he  hated  religion,  distrusted 
priests,  would  not  let  himself  be  carried  away 
by  any  instinct  of  admiration,  would  not  let 
himself  do  the  things  which  he  had  the  power 
to  do,  because  his  other,  critical  self  came 
mockingly  behind  him,  suggesting  that  very 
few  things  were  altogether  worth  doing. 
“There  is  nothing  that  I despise  and  even 
detest  so  much  as  humanity  in  general,”  he 
confesses  in  a letter;  and  it  is  with  a certain 
self-complacency  that  he  defines  the  only  kind 
of  society  in  which  he  found  himself  at  home: 
“(1)  With  unpretentious  people  whom  I have 
known  a long  time;  (2)  in  a Spanish  venta, 
with  muleteers  and  peasant  women  of  Anda- 
lusia.” One  day,  as  he  finds  himself  in  a pen- 


48 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


sive  mood,  dreaming  of  a woman,  he  trans- 
lates for  her  some  lines  of  Sophocles,  into  verse, 
“English  verse,  you  understand,  for  I abhor 
French  verse.”  The  carefulness  with  which 
he  avoids  received  opinions  shows  a certain 
consciousness  of  those  opinions,  which  in  a 
more  imaginatively  independent  mind  would 
scarcely  have  found  a place.  It  is  not  only 
for  an  effect,  but  more  and  more  genuinely, 
that  he  sets  his  acquirements  as  a scholar 
above  his  accomplishments  as  an  artist.  Clear- 
ing away,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  every  illusion 
from  before  his  eyes,  he  forgot  the  last  illusion 
of  positive  people:  the  possibility  that  one’s 
eyes  may  be  short-sighted. 

Merimee  realises  a type  which  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  associate  almost  exclusively  with  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  of  which  our  own  time 
can  offer  us  many  obscure  examples.  It  is 
the  type  of  the  esprit  fort:  the  learned  man, 
the  choice,  narrow  artist,  who  is  at  the  same 
time  the  cultivated  sensualist.  To  such  a 
man  the  pursuit  of  women  is  part  of  his  con- 
stant pursuit  of  human  experience,  and  of  the 
document,  which  is  the  summing  up  of  human 
experience.  To  Merimee  history  itself  was  a 


PROSPER  MfiRIMEE 


49 


matter  of  detail.  “In  history,  I care  only  for 
anecdotes,”  he  says  in  the  preface  to  the 
Clironique  du  Regne  de  Charles  IX.  And 
he  adds:  “It  is  not  a very  noble  taste;  but  I 
confess  to  my  shame,  I would  willingly  give 
Thucydides  for  the  authentic  memoirs  of 
Aspasia  or  of  a slave  of  Pericles;  for  only 
memoirs,  which  are  the  familiar  talk  of  an 
author  with  his  reader,  afford  those  portraits 
of  man  which  amuse  and  interest  me.”  This 
curiosity  of  mankind  above  all  things,  and  of 
mankind  at  home,  or  in  private  actions,  not 
necessarily  of  any  import  to  the  general  course 
of  the  world,  leads  the  curious  searcher  natur- 
ally to  the  more  privately  interesting  and  the 
less  publicly  important  half  of  mankind. 
Not  scrupulous  in  arriving  at  any  end  by  the 
most  adaptable  means,  not  disturbed  by  any 
illusions  as  to  the  physical  facts  of  the  uni- 
verse, a sincere  and  grateful  lover  of  variety, 
doubtless  an  amusing  companion  with  those 
who  amused  him,  Merimee  found  much  of 
his  entertainments  and  instruction,  at  all 
events  in  his  younger  years,  in  that  “half 
world”  which  he  tells  us  he  frequented  “very 
much  out  of  curiosity,  living  in  it  always  as 


50 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


in  a foreign  country.”  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
Merimee  played  the  part  of  the  amateur.  He 
liked  anecdotes,  not  great  events,  in  his  his- 
tory; and  he  was  careful  to  avoid  any  too 
serious  passions  in  his  search  for  sensations. 
There,  no  doubt,  for  the  sensualist,  is  happi- 
ness, if  he  can  resign  himself  to  it.  It  is  only 
serious  passions  which  make  anybody  unhappy; 
and  Merimee  was  carefully  on  the  lookout 
against  a possible  unhappiness.  I can  imagine 
him  ending  every  day  with  satisfaction,  and 
beginning  every  fresh  day  with  just  enough 
expectancy  to  be  agreeable,  at  that  period  of 
his  life  when  he  was  waiting  the  finest  of  his 
stories,  and  dividing  the  rest  of  his  leisure 
between  the  drawing-rooms  and  the  pursuit 
of  uneventful  adventures. 

Only,  though  we  are  automates  autant  qu’- 
esprit,  as  Pascal  tells  us,  it  is  useless  to  expect 
that  what  is  automatic  in  us  should  remain 
invariable  and  unconditioned.  If  life  could 
be  lived  on  a plan,  and  for  such  men  on  such 
a plan,  if  first  impulses  and  profound  passions 
could  be  kept  entirely  out  of  one’s  own  experi- 
ence, and  studied  only  at  a safe  distance,  then, 
no  doubt,  one  could  go  on  being  happy,  in  a 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 


51 


not  too  heroic  way.  But,  with  Merimee  as 
with  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  the  scheme 
breaks  down  one  day,  just  when  a reasonable 
solution  to  things  seems  to  have  been  arrived 
at.  Merimee  had  already  entered  on  a peace- 
able enough  liaison  when  the  first  letter  came 
to  him  from  the  Inconnue  to  whom  he  was  to 
write  so  many  letters,  for  nine  years  without 
seeing  her,  and  then  for  thirty  years  more  after 
he  had  met  her,  the  last  letter  being  written 
but  two  hours  before  his  death.  These  letters, 
which  we  can  now  read  in  two  volumes,  have  a 
delicately  insincere  sincerity  which  makes 
every  letter  a work  of  art,  not  because  he  tried 
to  make  it  so,  but  because  he  could  not  help 
seeing  the  form  simultaneously  with  the  feel- 
ing, and  writing  genuine  love-letters  with  an 
excellence  almost  as  impersonal  as  that  of  his 
stories.  He  begins  with  curiosity,  which  passes 
with  singular  rapidity  into  a kind  of  self- 
willed  passion;  already  in  the  eighth  letter, 
long  before  he  has  seen  her,  he  is  speculating 
which  of  the  two  will  know  best  how  to  torture 
the  other:  that  is,  as  he  views  it,  love  best. 
“We  shall  never  love  one  another  really/’ 
he  tells  her,  as  he  begins  to  hope  for  the  con- 


52 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


trary.  Then  he  discovers,  for  the  first  time, 
and  without  practical  result,  “that  it  is  better 
to  have  illusions  than  to  have  none  at  all.” 
He  confesses  himself  to  her,  sometimes  re- 
minding her:  “You  will  never  know  either  all 
the  good  or  all  the  evil  that  I have  in  me. 
I have  spent  my  life  in  being  praised  for 
qualities  which  I do  not  possess,  and  calumni- 
ated for  defects  which  are  not  mine.”  And, 
with  a strange,  weary  humility,  which  is  the 
other  side  of  his  contempt  for  most  things 
and  people,  he  admits:  “To  you  I am  like 
an  old  opera,  which  you  are  obliged  to  forget, 
in  order  to  see  it  again  with  any  pleasure.” 
He,  who  has  always  distrusted  first  impulses, 
finds  himself  telling  her  (was  she  really  so  like 
him,  or  was  he  arguing  with  himself?):  “You 
always  fear  first  impulses;  do  not  you  see 
that  they  are  the  only  ones  which  are  worth 
anything  and  which  always  succeed?”  Does 
he  realise,  unable  to  change  the  temperament 
which  he  has  partly  made  for  himself,  that 
just  there  has  been  his  owm  failure? 

Perhaps  of  all  love-letters,  these  of  Merimle 
show  us  love  triumphing  over  the  most  care- 
fully guarded  personality.  Here  the  obstacle 


PROSPER  M£RIMEE 


53 


is  not  duty,  nor  circumstance,  nor  a rival; 
but  (on  her  side  as  on  his,  it  would  seem)  a 
carefully  trained  natural  coldness,  in  which 
action,  and  even  for  the  most  part  feeling,  are 
relinquished  to  the  control  of  second  thoughts. 
A habit  of  repressive  irony  goes  deep : Merimee 
might  well  have  thought  himself  secure  against 
the  outbreak  of  an  unconditional  passion. 
Yet  here  we  find  passion  betraying  itself, 
often  only  by  bitterness,  together  with  a shy, 
surprising  tenderness,  in  this  curious  lovers’ 
itinerary,  marked  out  with  all  the  customary 
sign-posts,  and  leading,  for  all  its  wilful 
deviations,  along  the  inevitable  road. 

It  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  artist, 
by  the  habit  of  his  profession,  has  made  for 
himself  a sort  of  cuirass  of  phrases  against 
the  direct  attack  of  emotion,  and  so  will  suffer 
less  than  most  people  if  he  should  fall  into  love, 
and  things  should  not  go  altogether  well  with 
him.  Rather,  he  is  the  more  laid  open  to 
attack,  the  more  helplessly  entangled  when 
once  the  net  has  been  cast  over  him.  He 
lives  through  every  passionate  trouble,  not 
merely  with  the  daily  emotions  of  the  crowd, 
but  with  the  whole  of  his  imagination.  Pain  is 


54 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


multiplied  to  him  by  the  force  of  that  faculty 
by  which  he  conceives  delight.  What  is  most 
torturing  in  every  not  quite  fortunate  love  is 
memory,  and  the  artist  becomes  an  artist  by 
his  intensification  of  memory.  Merimee  has 
himself  defined  art  as  exaggeration  a propos. 
Well,  to  the  artist  his  own  life  is  an  exaggera- 
tion not  a propos,  and  every  hour  dramatises 
for  him  its  own  pain  and  pleasure,  in  a tragic 
comedy  of  which  he  is  the  author  and  actor 
and  spectator.  The  practice  of  art  is  a sharp- 
ening of  the  sensations,  and,  the  knife  once 
sharpened,  does  it  cut  into  one’s  hand  less 
deeply  because  one  is  in  the  act  of  using  it  to 
carve  wood? 

And  so  we  find  Merimee,  the  most  imper- 
sonal of  artists,  and  one  of  those  most  critical 
of.  the  caprices  and  violences  of  fate,  giving 
in  to  an  almost  obvious  temptation,  an  anon- 
ymous correspondence,  a mysterious  unknown 
woman,  and  passing  from  stage  to  stage  of 
a finally  very  genuine  love-affair,  which  kept 
him  in  a fluttering  agitation  for  more  than 
thirty  years.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  the 
little  which  we  know  of  this  Inconnue  seems 
to  mark  her  out  as  the  realisation  of  a type 


PROSPER  MERIM£E 


55 


which  had  always  been  M6rimee’s  type  of 
woman.  She  has  the  “wicked  eyes”  of  all 
his  heroines,  from  the  Mariquita  of  his  first 
attempt  in  literature,  who  haunts  the  Inquisitor 
with  “her  great  black  eyes,  like  the  eyes  of  a 
young  cat,  soft  and  wicked  at  once.”  He  finds 
her  at  the  end  of  his  life,  in  a novel  of  Tourgue- 
nieff,  “one  of  those  diabolical  creatures  whose 
coquetry  is  the  more  dangerous  because  it  is 
capable  of  passion.”  Like  so  many  artists, 
he  has  invented  his  ideal  before  he  meets  it, 
and  must  have  seemed  almost  to  have  fallen 
in  love  with  his  own  creation.  It  is  one  of  the 
privileges  of  art  to  create  nature,  as,  according 
to  a certain  mystical  doctrine,  you  can  actual- 
ise,  by  sheer  fixity  of  contemplation,  your 
mental  image  of  a thing  into  the  thing  itself. 
The  Inconnue  was  one  of  a series,  the  rest 
imaginary;  and  her  power  over  Merim^e,  we 
can  hardly  doubt,  came  not  only  from  her  queer 
likeness  of  temperament  to  his,  but  from  the 
singular,  flattering  pleasure  which  it  must 
have  given  him  to  find  that  he  had  invented 
with  so  much  truth  to  nature. 


56 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


2 

M6rimee  as  a writer  belongs  to  the  race  of 
Laclos  and  of  Stendhal,  a race  essentially 
French;  and  we  find  him  representing,  a little 
coldly,  as  it  seemed,  the  claims  of  mere  un- 
impassioned intellect,  at  work  on  passionate 
problems,  among  those  people  of  the  Romantic 
period  to  whom  emotion,  evident  emotion, 
was  everything.  In  his  subjects  he  is  as 
“Romantic”  as  Victor  Hugo  or  Gautier;  he 
adds,  even,  a peculiar  flavour  of  cruelty  to 
the  Romantic  ingredients.  But  he  distin- 
guishes sharply,  as  French  writers  before  him 
had  so  well  known  how  to  do,  between  the 
passion  one  is  recounting  and  the  moved  or 
unmoved  way  in  which  one  chooses  to  tell  it. 
To  Merimee  art  was  a very  formal  thing, 
almost  a part  of  learning;  it  was  a thing  to 
be  done  with  a clear  head,  reflectively,  with  a 
calm  mastery  of  even  the  most  vivid  material. 
While  others,  at  that  time,  were  intoxicating 
themselves  with  strange  sensations,  hoping 
that  “nature  would  take  the  pen  out  of  their 
hands  and  write,”  just  at  the  moment  when 
their  own  thoughts  became  least  coherent, 


PROSPER  MERIMRE 


57 


M6rim6e  went  quietly  to  work  over  something 
a little  abnormal  which  he  had  found  in 
nature,  with  as  disinterested,  as  scholarly,  as 
mentally  reserved  an  interest  as  if  it  were 
one  of  those  Gothic  monuments  which  he 
inspected  to  such  good  purpose,  and,  as  it 
has  seemed  to  his  biographer,  with  so  little 
sympathy.  His  own  emotion,  so  far  as  it  is 
roused,  seems  to  him  an  extraneous  thing,  a 
thing  to  be  concealed,  if  not  a little  ashamed  of. 
It  is  the  thing  itself  he  wishes  to  give  you,  not 
his  feelings  about  it;  and  his  theory  is  that 
if  the  thing  itself  can  only  be  made  to  stand 
and  speak  before  the  reader,  the  reader  will 
supply  for  himself  all  the  feeling  that  is  needed, 
all  the  feeling  that  would  be  called  out  in 
nature  by  a perfectly  clear  sight  of  just  such 
passions  in  action.  It  seems  to  him  bad  art 
to  paint  the  picture,  and  to  write  a description 
of  the  picture  as  well. 

And  his  method  serves  him  wonderfully 
up  to  a certain  point,  and  then  leaves  him, 
without  his  being  well  aware  of  it,  at  the 
moment  even  when  he  has  convinced  himself 
that  he  has  realised  the  utmost  of  his  aim. 
At  a time  when  he  had  come  to  consider 


58 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


scholarly  dexterity  as  the  most  important 
part  of  art,  Merimee  tells  us  that  La  Venus 
d'llle  seemed  to  him  the  best  story  he  had 
ever  written.  He  has  often  been  taken  at 
his  word,  but  to  take  him  at  his  word  is  to 
do  him  an  injustice.  La  Venus  d’llle  is  a 
modern  setting  of  the  old  story  of  the  Ring 
given  to  Venus,  and  M6rimee  has  been 
praised  for  the  ingenuity  with  which  he  has 
obtained  an  effect  of  supernatural  terror, 
while  leaving  the  way  open  for  a material 
explanation  of  the  supernatural.  What  he 
has  really  done  is  to  materialise  a myth,  by 
accepting  in  it  precisely  what  might  be  a mere 
superstition,  the  form  of  the  thing,  and  leaving 
out  the  spiritual  meaning  of  which  that  form 
was  no  more  than  a temporary  expression. 
The  ring  which  the  bridegroom  sets  on  the 
finger  of  Venus,  and  which  the  statue’s  finger 
closes  upon,  accepting  it,  symbolises  the  pact 
between  love  and  sensuality,  the  lover’s  abdi- 
cation of  all  but  the  physical  part  of  love;  and 
the  statue  taking  its  place  between  husband 
and  wife  on  the  marriage-night,  and  crushing 
life  out  of  him  in  an  inexorable  embrace, 
symbolises  the  merely  natural  destruction 


PROSPER  MfiRIMfiE 


59 


which  that  granted  prayer  brings  with  it,  as  a 
merely  human  Messalina  takes  her  lover  on 
his  own  terms,  in  his  abandonment  of  all  to 
Venus.  Merimee  sees  a cruel  and  fantastic 
superstition,  which  he  is  afraid  of  seeming 
to  take  too  seriously,  which  he  prefers  to  leave 
as  a story  of  ghosts  or  bogies,  a thing  at  which 
we  are  to  shiver  as  at  a mere  twitch  on  the 
nerves,  while  our  mental  confidence  in  the 
impossibility  of  what  we  cannot  explain  is 
preserved  for  us  by  a hint  at  a muleteer’s 
vengeance.  “Have  I frightened  you?”  says 
the  man  of  the  world,  with  a reassuring  smile. 
“Think  about  it  no  more;  I really  meant 
nothing.” 

And  yet,  does  he  after  all  mean  nothing? 
The  devil,  the  old  pagan  gods,  the  spirits  of 
evil  incarnated  under  every  form,  fascinated 
him;  it  gave  him  a malign  pleasure  to  set 
them  at  their  evil  work  among  men,  while, 
all  the  time,  he  mocks  them  and  the  men  who 
believed  in  them.  He  is  a materialist,  and 
yet  he  believes  in  at  least  a something  evil, 
outside  the  world,  or  in  the  heart  of  it,  which 
sets  humanity  at  its  strange  games,  relent- 
lessly. Even  then  he  will  not  surrender  his 


60 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


doubts,  his  ironies,  his  negations.  Is  he, 
perhaps,  at  times,  the  athiest  who  fears  that, 
after  all,  God  may  exist,  or  at  least  who  realises 
how  much  he  would  fear  him  if  he  did  exist? 

Merimee  had  always  delighted  in  mystifica- 
tions; he  was  always  on  his  guard  against  being 
mystified  himself,  either  by  nature  or  by  his 
fellow-creatures.  In  the  early  “Romantic” 
days  he  had  had  a genuine  passion  for  various 
things:  “local  colour,”  for  instance.  But 
even  then  he  had  invented  it  by  a kind  of  trick, 
and,  later  on,  he  explains  what  a poor  thing 
“local  colour”  is,  since  it  can  so  easily  be 
invented  without  leaving  one’s  study.  He 
is  full  of  curiosity,  and  will  go  far  to  satisfy 
it,  regretting  “the  decadence,”  in  our  times, 
“of  energetic  passions,  in  favour  of  tranquillity 
and  perhaps  of  happiness.”  These  energetic 
passions  he  will  find,  indeed,  in  our  own 
times,  in  Corsica,  in  Spain,  in  Lithuania, 
really  in  the  midst  of  a very  genuine  and  pro- 
foundly studied  “local  colour,”  and  also, 
under  many  disguises,  in  Parisian  drawing- 
rooms. Merimee  prized  happiness,  material 
comfort,  the  satisfaction  of  one’s  immediate 
desires,  very  highly,  and  it  was  his  keen  sense 


PROSPER  MfiRIMEE 


61 


of  life,  of  the  pleasures  of  living,  that  gave 
him  some  of  his  keenness  in  the  realisation  of 
violent  death,  physical  pain,  whatever  dis- 
turbs the  equilibrium  of  things  with  unusual 
emphasis.  Himself  really  selfish,  he  can  dis- 
tinguish the  unhappiness  of  others  with  a 
kind  of  intuition  which  is  not  sympathy,  but 
which  selfish  people  often  have:  a dramatic 
consciousness  of  how  painful  pain  must  be, 
whoever  feels  it.  It  is  not  pity,  though  it 
communicates  itself  to  us,  often  enough, 
as  pity.  It  is  the  clear-sighted  sensitiveness 
of  a man  who  watches  human  things  closely, 
bringing  them  home  to  himself  with  the 
deliberate,  essaying  art  of  an  actor  who  has 
to  represent  a particular  passion  in  movement. 

And  always  in  Merimee  there  is  this  union 
of  curiosity  with  indifference:  the  curiosity 
of  the  student,  the  indifference  of  the  man  of 
the  world.  Indifference,  in  him,  as  in  the  man 
of  the  world,  is  partly  an  attitude,  adopted 
for  its  form,  and  influencing  the  temperament 
just  so  much  as  gesture  always  influences 
emotion.  The  man  who  forces  himself  to 
appear  calm  under  excitement  teaches  his 
nerves  to  follow  instinctively  the  way  he  has 


62 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


shown  them.  In  time  he  will  not  merely 
seem  calm  but  will  be  calm,  at  the  moment 
when  he  learns  that  a great  disaster  has  be- 
fallen him.  But,  in  Merim6e,  was  the  indif- 
ference even  as  external  as  it  must  always  be 
when  there  is  restraint,  when,  therefore, 
there  is  something  to  restrain?  Was  there 
not  in  him  a certain  drying  up  of  the  sources 
of  emotion,  as  the  man  of  the  world  came  to 
accept  almost  the  point  of  view  of  society, 
reading  his  stories  to  a little  circle  of  court 
ladies,  when,  once  in  a while,  he  permitted 
himself  to  write  a story?  And  was  not  this 
increase  of  well-bred  indifference,  now  more 
than  ever  characteristic,  almost  the  man 
himself,  the  chief  reason  why  he  abandoned 
art  so  early,  writing  only  twro  or  three  short 
stories  during  the  last  twenty-five  years  of 
his  life,  and  writing  these  with  a labour  ’which 
by  no  means  conceals  itself? 

Merim6e  had  an  abstract  interest  in,  almost 
an  enthusiasm  for,  facts;  facts  for  their  mean- 
ing, the  light  they  throw  on  psychology.  He 
declines  to  consider  psychology  except  through 
its  expression  in  facts,  with  an  impersonality 
far  more  real  than  that  of  Flaubert.  The 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 


63 


document,  historical  or  social,  must  translate 
itself  into  sharp  action  before  he  can  use  it; 
not  that  he  does  not  see,  and  appreciate 
better  than  most  others,  all  there  is  of  signi- 
ficance in  the  document  itself;  but  his  theory 
of  art  is  inexorable.  He  never  allowed  him- 
self to  write  as  he  pleased,  but  he  wrote  always 
as  he  considered  the  artist  should  write.  Thus 
he  made  for  himself  a kind  of  formula,  confin- 
ing himself,  as  some  thought,  within  too  narrow 
limits,  but,  to  himself,  doing  exactly  what  he 
set  himself  to  do,  with  all  the  satisfaction  of 
one  who  is  convinced  of  the  justice  of  his  aim 
and  confident  of  his  power  to  attain  it. 

Look,  for  instance,  at  his  longest,  far  from 
his  best  work,  La  Chronique  du  Regne  de 
Charles  IX.  Like  so  much  of  his  work,  it 
has  something  of  the  air  of  a tour  de  force, 
not  taken  up  entirely  for  its  own  sake.  M£ri- 
m6e  drops  into  a fashion,  half  deprecatingly, 
as  if  he  sees  through  it,  and  yet,  as  with 
merely  mundane  elegance,  with  a resolve  to 
be  more  scrupuously  exact  than  its  devotees. 
“Belief,”  says  some  one  in  this  book,  as  if 
speaking  for  Merimee,  “is  a precious  gift 
which  has  been  denied  me.”  Well,  he  will 


64 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


do  better,  without  belief,  than  those  who  be- 
lieve. Written  under  a title  which  suggests 
a work  of  actual  history,  it  is  more  than  possible 
that  the  first  suggestion  of  this  book  really 
came,  as  he  tells  us  in  the  preface,  from  the 
reading  of  “a  large  number  of  memoirs  and 
pamphlets  relating  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century.”  “I  wished  to  make  an  epitome  of 
my  reading,”  he  tells  us,  “and  here  is  the 
epitome.”  The  historical  problem  attracted 
him,  that  never  quite  explicable  Massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  in  which  there  was  pre- 
cisely the  violence  of  action  and  uncertainty 
of  motive  which  he  liked  to  set  before  him  at 
the  beginning  of  a task  in  literature.  Probable, 
clearly  defined  people,  in  the  dress  of  the 
period,  grew  up  naturally  about  this  central 
motive;  humour  and  irony  have  their  part; 
there  are  adventures,  told  with  a sword’s 
point  of  sharpness,  and  in  the  fewest  possible 
words;  there  is  one  of  his  cruel  and  loving 
women,  in  whom  every  sentiment  becomes 
action,  by  some  twisted  feminine  logic  of  their 
own.  It  is  the  most  artistic,  the  most  clean- 
cut,  of  historical  novels;  and  yet  this  perfect 
neatness  of  method  suggests  a certain  indif- 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 


65 


ference  on  the  part  of  the  writer,  as  if  he  were 
more  interested  in  doing  the  thing  well  than  in 
doing  it. 

And  that,  in  all  but  the  very  best  of  his 
stories  (even,  perhaps,  in  Arsene  Guillot  only 
not  in  such  perfect  things  as  Carmen , as 
Mateo  Falcone ),  is  what  Merimee  just  lets  us 
see,  underneath  an  almost  faultless  skill  of 
narrative.  An  incident  told  by  Merimee  at 
his  best  gathers  about  it  something  of  the 
gravity  of  history,  the  composed  way  in  which 
it  is  told  helping  to  give  it  the  equivalent  of 
remoteness,  allowing  it  not  merely  to  be,  but, 
what  is  more  difficult,  to  seem  classic  in  its 
own  time.  “Magnificent  things,  things  after 
my  own  heart — that  is  to  say,  Greek  in  their 
truth  and  simplicity,”  he  writes  in  a letter, 
referring  to  the  tales  of  Poushkin.  The  phrase 
is  scarcely  too  strong  to  apply  to  what  is  best 
in  his  own  work.  Made  out  of  elemental 
passions,  hard,  cruel,  detached  as  it  were  from 
their  own  sentiments,  the  stories  that  he  tells 
might  in  other  hands  become  melodramas: 
Carmen,  taken  thoughtlessly  out  of  his  hands, 
has  supplied  the  libretto  to  the  most  popu- 
lar of  modern  light  operas.  And  yet,  in  his 


66 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


severe  method  of  telling,  mere  outlines,  it 
seems,  told  with  an  even  stricter  watch  over 
what  is  significantly  left  out  than  over  what  is 
briefly  allowed  to  be  said  in  words,  these  stories 
sum  up  little  separate  pieces  of  the  world, 
each  a little  world  in  itself.  And  each  is  a 
little  world  w'hich  he  has  made  his  own,  with  a 
labor  at  last  its  own  reward,  and  taking  life 
partly  because  he  has  put  into  it  more  of  him- 
self than  the  mere  intention  of  doing  it  well. 
Merimee  loved  Spain,  and  Carmen,  which,  by 
some  caprice  of  popularity,  is  the  symbol  of 
Spain  to  people  in  general,  is  really,  to  those 
who  know  Spain  well,  the  most  Spanish  thing 
that  has  been  written  since  Gil  Bias.  All  the 
little  parade  of  local  colour  and  philology, 
the  appendix  on  the  Calo  of  the  gipsies,  done 
to  heighten  the  illusion,  has  more  significance 
than  people  sometimes  think.  In  this  story 
all  the  qualities  of  Merimee  come  into  agree- 
ment; the  student  of  human  passions,  the 
traveller,  the  observer,  the  learned  man,  meet 
in  harmony;  and,  in  addition,  there  is  the 
aficionado,  the  true  amateur,  in  love  with  Spain 
and  the  Spaniards. 

It  is  significant  that  at  the  reception  of 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 


67 


Merimee  at  the  Academie  Frangaise  in  1845, 
M.  Etienne  thought  it  already  needful  to  say: 
“Do  not  pause  in  the  midst  of  your  career; 
rest  is  not  permitted  to  your  talent.”  Already 
Merimee  was  giving  way  to  facts,  to  facts  in 
themselves,  as  they  come  into  history,  into 
records  of  scholarship.  We  find  him  writing,  a 
little  dryly,  on  Catiline,  on  Csesar,  on  Don 
Pedro  the  Cruel,  learning  Russian,  and  trans- 
lating from  it  (yet,  while  studying  the  Russians 
before  all  the  world,  never  discovering  the 
mystical  Russian  soul),  writing  learned  articles, 
writing  reports.  He  looked  around  on  con- 
temporary literature,  and  found  nothing  that 
he  could  care  for.  Stendhal  was  gone,  and 
who  else  was  there  to  admire?  Flaubert,  it 
seemed  to  him,  was  “wasting  his  talent  under 
the  pretence  of  realism.”  Victor  Hugo  was 
“a  fellow  with  the  most  beautiful  figures  of 
speech  at  his  disposal,”  who  did  not  take  the 
trouble  to  think,  but  intoxicated  himself  with 
his  own  words.  Baudelaire  made  him  furious, 
Renan  filled  him  with  pitying  scorn.  In  the 
midst  of  his  contempt,  he  may  perhaps  have 
imagined  that  he  was  being  left  behind.  For 
whatever  reason,  weakness  or  strength,  he 


68 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


could  not  persuade  himself  that  it  was  worth 
while  to  strive  for  anything  any  more.  He 
died  probably  at  the  moment  when  he  was  no 
longer  a fashion,  and  had  not  yet  become  a 
classic. 

1901. 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


1 

This  is  the  problem  of  one  who  lost  the 
whole  world  and  gained  his  own  soul. 

“I  like  to  arrange  my  life  as  if  it  were  a 
novel,”  wrote  Gerard  de  Nerval,  and,  indeed, 
C it  is  somewhat  difficult  to  disentangle  the  pre- 
/ cise  facts  of  an  existence  which  was  never 
quite  conscious  where  began  and  where  ended 
that  “overflowing  of  dreams  into  real  life,”  of 
which  he  speaks.  “I  do  not  ask  of  God,” 
he  said,  “that  he  should  change  anything  in 
events  themselves,  but  that  he  should  change 
me  in  regard  to  things,  so  that  I might  have  the 
power  to  create  my  own  universe  about  me, 
to  govern  my  dreams,  instead  of  enduring 
them.”  The  prayer  was  not  granted,  in  its 
entirety;  and  the  tragedy  of  his  life  lay  in 
the  vain  endeavour  to  hold  back  the  irresistible 
empire  of  the  unseen,  which  it  was  the  joy  of 
his  life  to  summon  about  him.  Briefly,  we 

69 


70 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


know  that  Gerard  Labrunie  (the  name  de 
Nerval  was  taken  from  a little  piece  of  prop- 
erty, worth  some  1500  francs,  uThich  he  liked 
to  imagine  had  always  been  in  the  possession 
of  his  family)  was  born  at  Paris,  May  22,  1808. 
His  father  was  surgeon-major;  his  mother 
died  before  he  was  old  enough  to  remember 
her,  following  the  Grande  Armee  on  the  Rus- 
sian campaign;  and  Gerard  was  brought  up, 
largely  under  the  care  of  a studious  and  erratic 
uncle,  in  a little  village  called  Montagny,  near 
Ermenonville.  He  was  a precocious  schoolboy, 
and  by  the  age  of  eighteen  had  published  six 
little  collections  of  verses.  It  was  during  one 
of  his  holidays  that  he  saw,  for  the  first  and 
last  time,  the  young  girl  whom  he  calls  Adri- 
enne, and  whom,  under  many  names,  he  loved 
to  the  end  of  his  life.  One  evening  she  had 
come  from  the  chateau  to  dance  with  the 
young  peasant  girls  on  the  grass.  She  had 
danced  with  Gerard,  he  had  kissed  her  cheek, 
he  had  crowned  her  hair  with  laurels,  he  had 
heard  her  sing  an  old  song  telling  of  the  sorrows 
of  a princess  whom  her  father  had  shut  in  a 
tower  because  she  had  loved.  To  Gerard  it 
seemed  that  already  he  remembered  her,  and 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


71 


certainly  he  was  never  to  forget  her.  After- 
wards, he  heard  that  Adrienne  had  taken  the 
veil;  then,  that  she  was  dead.  To  one  who 
had  realised  that  it  is  “we,  the  living,  who  walk 
in  a world  of  phantoms,”  death  could  not  ex- 
clude hope;  and  when,  many  years  later,  he 
fell  seriously  and  fantastically  in  love  with  a 
little  actress  called  Jenny  Colon,  it  was  because 
he  seemed  to  have  found,  in  that  blonde  and 
very  human  person,  the  re-incarnation  of  the 
blonde  Adrienne. 

Meanwhile  Gerard  was  living  in  Paris, 
among  his  friends  the  Romantics,  writing  and 
living  in  an  equally  desultory  fashion.  Le 
bon  Gerard  was  the  best  loved,  and,  in  his  time, 
not  the  least  famous,  of  the  company.  He 
led,  by  choice,  now  in  Paris,  now  across  Eu- 
rope, the  life  of  a vagabond,  and  more  per- 
sistently than  others  of  his  friends  who  were 
driven  to  it  by  need.  At  that  time,  when  it 
was  the  aim  of  every  one  to  be  as  eccentric  as 
possible,  the  eccentricities  of  Gerard’s  life  and 
thought  seemed,  on  the  whole,  less  noticeable 
than  those  of  many  really  quite  normal  per- 
sons. But  with  Gerard  there  was  no  pose; 
and  when,  one  day,  he  was  found  in  the  Palais- 


72 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Royal,  leading  a lobster  at  the  end  of  a blue 
ribbon  (because,  he  said,  it  does  not  bark,  and 
knows  the  secrets  of  the  sea),  the  visionary  had 
simply  lost  control  of  his  visions,  and  had  to  be 
sent  to  Dr.  Blanche’s  asylum  at  Montmartre. 
He  entered  March  21,  1841,  and  came  out, 
apparently  well  again,  on  the  21st  of  November. 
It  would  seem  that  this  first  access  of  madness 
was,  to  some  extent,  the  consequence  of  the 
final  rupture  with  Jenny  Colon;  on  June  5, 
1842,  she  died  and  it  was  partly  in  order  to  put 
as  many  leagues  of  the  earth  as  possible  be- 
tween him  and  that  memory  that  Gerard  set 
out,  at  the  end  of  1842,  for  the  East.  It  was 
also  in  order  to  prove  to  the  world,  by  his  con- 
sciousness of  external  things,  that  he  had 
recovered  his  reason.  While  he  was  in  Sjuia, 
he  once  more  fell  in  love  with  a new  incarna- 
tion of  Adrienne,  a young  Druse,  Salema,  the 
daughter  of  a Sheikh  of  Lebanon ; and  it  seems 
to  have  been  almost  by  accident  that  he  did 
not  marry  her.  He  returned  to  Paris  at  the 
end  of  1843  or  the  beginning  of  1844,  and  for 
the  next  few  years  he  lived  mostly  in  Paris, 
writing  charming,  graceful,  remarkably  sane 
articles  and  books  and  wandering  about  the 


GERARD  de  nerval 


73 


streets,  by  day  and  night,  in  a perpetual  dream 
from  which,  now  and  again,  he  was  somewhat 
rudely  awakened.  When,  in  the  spring  of 
1853,  he  went  to  see  Heine,  for  whom  he  was 
doing  an  admirable  prose  translation  of  his 
poems,  and  told  him  he  had  come  to  return  the 
money  he  had  received  in  advance,  because 
the  times  were  accomplished,  and  the  end  of 
the  world,  announced  by  the  Apocalypse,  was 
at  hand,  Heine  sent  for  a cab,  and  Gerard 
found  himself  at  Dr.  Dubois’  asylum,  where 
he  remained  two  months.  It  was  on  coming 
out  of  the  asylum  that  he  wrote  Sylvie,  a 
delightful  idyl,  chiefly  autobiographical,  one 
of  his  three  actual  achievements.  On  August 
27,  1853,  he  had  to  be  taken  to  Dr.  Blanche’s 
asylum  at  Passy,  where  he  remained  till  May 
27,  1854.  Thither,  after  a month  or  two  spent 
in  Germany,  he  returned  on  August  8,  and  on 
October  19  he  came  out  for  the  last  time,  man- 
ifestly uncured.  He  was  now  engaged  on  the 
narrative  o his  own  madness,  and  the  first 
part  of  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie  appeared  in  the  Revue 
de  Paris  of  January  1,  1855.  On  the  20th  he 
came  into  the  office  of  the  review,  and  showed 
Gautier  and  Maxime  du  Camp  an  apron- 


74 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


string  which  he  was  carrying  in  his  pocket. 
“It  is  the  girdle,”  he  said,  “that  Madame  de 
Maintenon  wore  wThen  she  had  Esther  per- 
formed at  Saint-Cyr.”  On  the  24th  he  wrote 
to  a friend:  “Come  and  prove  my  identity  at 
the  police-station  of  the  Chatelet.”  The  night 
before  he  had  been  working  at  his  manuscript 
in  a pot-house  of  Les  Halles,  and  had  been 
arrested  as  a vagabond.  He  was  used  to  such 
little  misadventures,  but  he  complained  of  the 
difficulty  of  writing.  “1  set  off  after  an  idea,” 
he  said,  “and  lose  myself;  I am  hours  in  find- 
ing my  way  back.  Do  you  know  I can  scarcely 
write  twenty  lines  a day,  the  darkness  comes 
about  me  so  close!”  He  took  out  the  apron- 
string. “It  is  the  garter  of  the  Queen  of 
Sheba,”  he  said.  The  snow  was  freezing  on 
the  ground,  and  on  the  night  of  the  25th,  at 
three  in  the  morning,  the  landlord  of  a “penny 
doss”  in  the  Rue  de  la  Vieille-Lanterne,  a 
filthy  alley  lying  between  the  quays  and  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli,  heard  some  one  knocking  at 
the  door,  but  did  not  open,  on  account  of  the 
cold.  At  dawn,  the  body  of  Gerard  de  Nerval 
was  found  hanging  by  the  apron-string  to  a 
bar  of  the  window. 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


75 


It  is  not  necessary  to  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  the  half-dozen  volumes  which 
make  up  the  works  of  Gerard  de  Nerval.  He 
was  not  a great  writer;  he  had  moments  of 
greatness;  and  it  is  the  particular  quality  of 
these  moments  which  is  of  interest  for  us. 
There  is  the  entertaining,  but  not  more  than 
entertaining,  Voyage  en  Orient;  there  is  the 
estimable  translation  of  Faust,  and  the  ad- 
mirable versions  from  Heine;  there  are  the 
volumes  of  short  stories  and  sketches,  of 
which  even  Les  Illumines,  in  spite  of  the 
promise  of  its  title,  is  little  more  than  an 
agreeable  compilation.  But  there  remain 
three  compositions:  the  sonnets,  Le  Reve  et 
la  Vie,  and  Sylvie;  of  which  Sylvie  is  the 
most  objectively  achieved,  a wandering  idyl, 
full  of  pastoral  delight,  and  containing  some 
folk-songs  of  Valois,  two  of  which  have  been 
translated  by  Rossetti;  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie 
being  the  most  intensely  personal,  a narrative 
of  madness,  unique  as  madness  itself;  and 
the  sonnets,  a kind  of  miracle,  which  may 
be  held  to  have  created  something  at  least  of 
the  method  of  the  later  Symbolist.  These 
three  compositions,  in  which  alone  Gerard  is 


76 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


his  finest  self,  all  belong  to  the  periods  when 
he  was,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  actually 
mad.  The  sonnets  belong  to  two  of  these 
periods,  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie  to  the  last;  Sylvie 
was  written  in  the  short  interval  between  the 
two  attacks  in  the  early  part  of  1853.  We 
have  thus  the  case  of  a writer,  graceful  and 
elegant  when  he  is  sane,  but  only  inspired, 
only  really  wise,  passionate,  collected,  only 
really  master  of  himself,  when  he  is  insane. 
It  may  be  worth  looking  at  a few  of  the 
points  which  so  suggestive  a problem  presents 
to  us. 


2 

Gerard  de  Nerval  lived  the  transfigured 
inner  life  of  the  dreamer.  “I  was  very 
tired  of  life!”  he  says.  And  like  so  many 
dreamers,  who  have  all  the  luminous  darkness 
of  the  universe  in  their  brains,  he  found  his 
most  precious  and  uninterrupted  solitude  in 
the  crowded  and  more  sordid  streets  of  great 
cities.  He  who  had  loved  the  Queen  of 
Sheba,  and  seen  the  seven  Elohims  dividing 
the  world,  could  find  nothing  more  tolerable 


GERARD  de  nerval 


77 


in  mortal  conditions,  when  he  was  truly  aware 
of  them,  than  the  company  of  the  meanest  of 
mankind,  in  whom  poverty  and  vice,  and  the 
hard  pressure  of  civilisation,  still  leave  some 
of  the  original  vivacity  of  the  human  comedy. 
The  real  world  seeming  to  be  always  so  far 
from  him,  and  a sort  of  terror  of  the  gulfs 
holding  him,  in  spite  of  himself,  to  its  fly- 
ing skirts,  he  found  something  at  all  events 
realisable,  concrete,  in  these  drinkers  of  Les 
Halles,  these  vagabonds  of  the  Place  du 
Carrousel,  among  whom  he  so  often  sought 
refuge.  It  was  literally,  in  part,  a refuge. 
During  the  day  he  could  sleep,  but  night 
wakened  him,  and  that  restlessness,  which 
the  night  draws  out  in  those  who  are  really 
under  lunar  influences,  set  his  feet  wandering, 
if  only  in  order  that  his  mind  might  wander 
the  less.  The  sun,  as  he  mentions,  never 
appears  in  dreams;  but,  with  the  approach  of 
night,  is  not  every  one  a little  readier  to  be- 
lieve in  the  mystery  lurking  behind  the  world? 

Crains,  dans  le  mur  aveugle,  un  regard  qui  t’6pie! 

he  writes  in  one  of  his  great  sonnets;  and 
that  fear  of  the  invisible  watchfulness  of 


78 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


nature  was  never  absent  from  him.  It  is 
one  of  the  terrors  of  human  existence  that 
we  may  be  led  at  once  to  seek  and  so  shun 
solitude;  unable  to  bear  the  mortal  pressure 
if  its  embrace,  unable  to  endure  the  nos- 
talgia of  its  absence.  “I  think  man’s  hap- 
piest when  he  forgets  himself,”  says  an 
Elizabethan  dramatist;  and,  with  Gerard, 
there  was  Adrienne  to  forget,  and  Jenny 
Colon  the  actress,  and  the  Queen  of  Sheba. 
But  to  have  drunk  of  the  cup  of  dreams 
is  to  have  drunk  of  the  cup  of  eternal 
memory.  The  past,  and,  as  it  seemed  to 
him,  the  future  were  continually  with  him; 
only  the  present  fled  continually  from  under 
his  feet.  It  was  only  by  the  effort  of  this 
contact  with  people  who  lived  so  sincerely 
in  the  day,  the  minute,  that  he  could  find 
even  a temporary  foothold.  With  them,  at 
least,  he  could  hold  back  all  the  stars,  and 
the  darkness  beyond  them,  and  the  inter- 
minable approach  and  disappearance  of  all 
the  ages,  if  only  for  the  space  between  tavern 
and  tavern,  where  he  could  open  his  eyes 
on  so  frank  an  abandonment  to  the  common 
drunkenness  of  most  people  in  this  world, 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


79 


here  for  once  really  living  the  symbolic  in- 
toxication of  their  ignorance. 

Like  so  many  dreamers  of  illimitable 
dreams,  it  was  the  fate  of  Gerard  to  incarnate 
his  ideal  in  the  person  of  an  actress.  The 
fatal  transfiguration  of  the  footlights,  in  which 
reality  and  the  artificial  change  places  with 
so  fantastic  a regularity,  has  drawn  many 
moths  into  its  flame,  and  will  draw  more, 
as  long  as  men  persist  in  demanding  illu- 
sion of  what  is  real,  and  reality  in  what  is 
illusion.  The  Jenny  Colons  of  the  world 
are  very  simple,  very  real,  if  one  will  but 
refrain  from  assuming  them  to  be  a mystery. 
But  it  is  the  penalty  of  all  imaginative  lovers 
to  create  for  themselves  the  veil  which  hides 
from  them  the  features  of  the  beloved.  It 
is  their  privilage,  for  it  is  incomparably  more 
entrancing  to  fancy  oneself  in  love  with  Isis 
than  to  know  that  one  is  in  love  with  Manon 
Lescaut.  The  picture  of  G6rard,  after  many 
hesitations,  revealing  to  the  astonished  Jenny 
that  she  is  the  incarnation  of  another,  the 
shadow  of  a dream,  that  she  has  been 
Adrienne  and  is  about  to  be  the  Queen  of 
Sheba;  her  very  human  little  cry  of  pure 


80 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


incomprehension,  Mats  vous  ne  m’aimez  pas! 
and  her  prompt  refuge  in  the  arms  of  the 
jeune  premier  ride,  if  it  were  not  of  the 
acutest  pathos,  would  certainly  be  of  the 
most  quintessential  comedy.  For  Gerard,  so 
sharp  an  awakening  was  but  like  the  passage 
from  one  state  to  another,  across  that  little 
bridge  of  one  step  which  lies  between  heaven 
and  hell,  to  which  he  was  so  used  in  his 
dreams.  It  gave  permanency  to  the  trivial, 
crystallising  it,  in  another  than  Stendhal’s 
sense;  and  when  death  came,  changing  mere 
human  memory  into  the  terms  of  eternity, 
the  darkness  of  the  spiritual  wrorld  was  lit 
with  a new  star,  which  was  henceforth  the 
wandering,  desolate  guide  of  so  many  visions. 
The  tragic  figure  of  Aurelia,  which  comes  and 
goes  through  all  the  labyrinths  of  dream,  is 
now  seen  always  “as  if  lit  up  by  a lightning- 
flash,  pale  and  dying,  hurried  away  by  dark 
horsemen.” 

The  dream  or  doctrine  of  the  re-incarna- 
tion of  souls,  which  has  given  so  much  con- 
- solation  to  so  many  questioners  of  eternity, 
was  for  Gerard  (need  we  doubt?)  a dream 
rather  than  a doctrine,  but  one  of  those 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


81 


dreams  which  are  nearer  to  a man  than  his 
breath.  “This  vague  and  hopeless  love,” 
he  writes  in  Sylvie,  “inspired  by  an  actress, 
which  night  by  night  took  hold  of  me  at  the 
hour  of  the  performance,  leaving  me  only  at 
the  hour  of  sleep,  had  its  germ  in  the  recol- 
lection of  Adrienne,  flower  of  the  night,  un- 
folding under  the  pale  rays  of  the  moon,  rosy 
and  blonde  phantom,  gliding  over  the  green 
grass,  half  bathed  in  white  mist.  ...  To  love 
a nun  under  the  form  of  an  actress!  . . . 
and  if  it  were  the  very  same!  It  is  enough 
to  drive  one  mad!”  Yes,  il  y a de  quoi 
devenir  fou,  as  Gerard  had  found;  but  there 
was  also,  in  this  intimate  sense  of  the  unity, 
perpetuity,  and  harmoniously  recurring 
rhythm  of  nature,  not  a little  of  the  inner 
substance  of  wisdom.  It  was  a dream,  per- 
haps refracted  from  some  broken,  illumi- 
nating angle  by  which  madness  catches  un- 
seen light,  that  revealed  to  him  the  meaning 
of  his  own  superstition,  fatality,  malady: 
“During  my  sleep,  I had  a marvelous  vision. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  the  goddess  appeared 
before  me,  saying  to  me:  ‘I  am  the  same 
as  Mary,  the  same  as  thy  mother,  the  same 


82 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


also  whom,  under  all  forms,  thou  hast  always 
loved.  At  each  of  thine  ordeals  I have  dropt 
yet  one  more  of  the  masks  with  which  I veil 
my  countenance,  and  soon  thou  shalt  see 
me  as  I am!’”  And  in  perhaps  his  finest 
sonnet,  the  mysterious  Artemis,  we  have, 
under  other  symbols,  and  with  the  deliberate 
inconsequence  of  these  sonnets,  the  comfort 
and  despair  of  the  same  faith. 

La  Triezieme  revient . . . C’est  encor  la  premiere; 

Et  c’est  toujours  la  seule, — ou  c’est  le  seul  moment: 

Car  es-tu  reine,  6 toil  la  premiere  ou  derniere? 

Es-tu  roi,  toi  le  seul  ou  le  dernier  amant?  . . . 

Aimez  qui  vous  aima  du  berceau  dans  la  biere; 

Celle  que  j’aimai  seul  m’aime  encor  tendrement; 

C’est  la  mort — ou  la  morte  . . . O delice!  6 tourment! 

La  Rose  qu’elle  tient,  c’est  la  Rose  tremiere. 

Sainte  napolitaine  aux  mains  pleines  de  feux, 

Rose  au  cceur  violet,  fleur  de  sainte  Gudule; 

As-tu  trouve  ta  croix  dans  le  desert  cieux? 

Roses  blanches,  tombez!  vous  insultez  nos  dieux: 

Tombez,  fantomes  blancs,  de  votre  ciel  qui  brlile: 

— La  Sainte  de  l’abime  est  plus  sainte  a mes  yeux! 

Who  has  not  often  meditated,  aboye  all 
what  artist,  on  the  slightness,  after  all,  of  the 
link  which  holds  our  faculties  together  in 
that  sober  health  of  the  brain  which  we  call 


GERARD  de  nerval 


83 


reason?  Are  there  not  moments  when  that 
link  seems  to  be  worn  down  to  so  fine  a 
tenuity  that  the  wing  of  a passing  dream 
might  suffice  to  snap  it?  The  consciousness 
seems,  as  it  were,  to  expand  and  contract  at  . 
once,  into  something  too  wide  for  the  uni- 
verse, and  too  narrow  for  the  thought  of 
self  to  find  room  within  it.  Is  it  that  the 
sense  of  identity  is  about  to  evaporate,  an- 
nihilating all,  or  is  it  that  a more  profound 
identity,  the  identity  of  the  whole  sentient 
universe,  has  been  at  last  realised?  Leaving 
the  concrete  world  on  these  brief  voyages, 
the  fear  is  that  we  may  not  have  strength  to 
return,  or  that  we  may  lose  the  way  back. 
Every  artist  lives  a double  life,  in  which  he 
is  for  the  most  part  conscious  of  the  illusions 
of  the  imagination.  He  is  conscious  also  of 
the  illusions  of  the  nerves,  which  he  shares 
with  every  man  of  imaginative  mind.  Nights 
of  insomnia,  days  of  anxious  waiting,  the 
sudden  shock  of  an  event,  and  one  of  these 
common  disturbances  may  be  enough  to 
jangle  the  tuneless  bells  of  one’s  nerves. 
The  artist  can  distinguish  these  causes  of 
certain  of  his  moods  from  those  other  causes 


84 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


which  come  to  him  because  he  is  an  artist, 
and  are  properly  concerned  with  that  inven- 
tion which  is  his  own  function.  Yet  is  there 
not  some  danger  that  he  may  come  to  confuse 

— one  with  the  other,  that  he  may  “lose  the 
thread”  which  conducts  him  through  the  in- 
tricacies of  the  inner  world? 

The  supreme  artist,  certainly,  is  the  furthest 

— of  all  men  from  this  danger;  for  he  is  the 
supreme  intelligence.  Like  Dante,  he  can 
pass  through  hell  unsinged.  With  him,  imag- 

— ination  is  vision;  when  he  looks  into  the  dark- 
ness, he  sees.  The  vague  dreamer,  the  inse- 
cure artist  and  the  uncertain  mystic  at  once, 
sees  only  shadows,  not  recognising  their  out- 
lines. He  is  mastered  by  the  images  which 
have  come  at  his  call;  he  has  not  the  power 
which  chains  them  for  his  slaves.  “The  king- 
dom of  Heaven  suffers  violence,”  and  the 
dreamer  who  has  gone  tremblingly  into  the 
darkness  is  in  peril  at  the  hands  of  those  very 
real  phantoms  who  are  the  reflection  of  his 
fear. 

The  madness  of  Gerard  de  Nerval,  what- 
ever physiological  reasons  may  be  rightly 
given  for  its  outbreak,  subsidence,  and  return, 


GfiRARD  DE  NERVAL 


85 


I take  to  have  been  essentially  due  to  the 
weakness  and  not  the  excess  of  his  visionary 
quality,  to  the  insufficiency  of  his  imaginative 
energy,  and  to  his  lack  of  spiritual  discipline. 
He  was  an  unsystematic  mystic;  his  “Tower 
of  Babel  in  two  hundred  volumes,”  that  med- 
ley of  books  of  religion,  science,  astrology,  his- 
tory, travel,  which  he  thought  would  have 
rejoiced  the  heart  of  Pico  della  Mirandola,  of 
Meursius,  or  of  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  was  truly, 
as  he  says,  “enough  to  drive  a wise  man  mad.” 
“Why  not  also,”  he  adds,  “enough  to  make  a 
madman  wise?”  But  precisely  because  it  was 
this  amas  bizarre,  this  jumble  of  the  perilous 
secrets  in  which  wisdom  is  so  often  folly,  and 
folly  so  often  wisdom.  He  speaks  vaguely  of 
the  Cabbala;  the  Cabbala  would  have  been 
safety  to  him,  as  the  Catholic  Church  would 
have  been,  or  any  other  reasoned  scheme  of 
things.  Wavering  among  intuitions,  ignor- 
ances, half-truths,  shadows  of  falsehood,  now 
audacious,  now  hesitating,  he  was  blown 
hither  and  thither  by  conflicting  winds,  a 
prey  to  the  indefinite. 

Le  Reve  et  la  Vie,  the  last  fragments  of 
which  were  found  in  his  pockets  after  his 


86 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


suicide,  scrawled  on  scraps  of  paper,  inter- 
rupted with  Cabbalistic  signs  and  “a  demon- 
stration of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by 
‘"geometry,”  is  a narrative  of  a madman’s 
visions  by  the  madman  himself,  yet  showing, 
as  Gautier  says,  “cold  reason  seated  by  the 
bedside  of  hot  fever,  hallucination  analysing 
itself  by  a supreme  philosophic  effort.”  What 
is  curious,  yet  after  all  natural,  is  that  part 
of  the  narrative  seems  to  be  contemporaneous 
with  what  it  describes,  and  part  subsequent 
to  it;  so  that  it  is  not  as  when  De  Quincey 
says  to  us,  such  or  such  wras  the  opium-dream 
that  I had  on  such  a night;  but  as  if  the 
opium-dreamer  had  begun  to  write  down  his 
dream  while  he  was  yet  within  its  coils. 
“The  descent  into  hell,”  he  calls  it  twice; 
yet  does  he  not  also  w-rite:  “At  times  I 
imagined  that  my  force  and  my  activity  were 
doubled;  it  seemed  to  me  that  I knew  every- 
thing, understood  everything;  and  imagina- 
tion brought  me  infinite  pleasures.  Now  that 
I have  recovered  what  men  call  reason,  must 
I not  regret  having  lost  them?”  But  he  had 
not  lost  them;  he  wras  still  in  that  state  of 
double  consciousness  which  he  describes  in 


GERARD  de  nerval 


87 


one  of  his  visions,  when,  seeing  people  dressed 
in  white,  “I  was  astonished,”  he  says,  “to 
see  them  all  dressed  in  white;  yet  it  seemed  to 
me  that  this  was  an  optical  illusion.”  His 
cosmical  visions  are  at  times  so  magnificent 
that  he  seems  to  be  creating  myths;  and  it  is 
with  a worthy  ingenuity  that  he  plays  the  part 
he  imagines  to  be  assigned  to  him  in  his  astral 
influences. 

“First  of  all  I imagined  that  the  persons 
collected  in  the  garden  (of  the  madhouse)  all 
had  some  influence  on  the  stars,  and  that  the 
one  who  always  walked  round  and  round  in  a 
circle  regulated  the  course  of  the  sun.  An  old 
man,  who  was  brought  there  at  certain  hours  of 
the  day,  and  who  made  knots  as  he  consulted 
his  watch,  seemed  to  me  to  be  charged  with 
the  notation  of  the  course  of  the  hours.  I 
attributed  to  myself  an  influence  over  the 
course  of  the  moon,  and  I believed  that  this 
star  had  been  struck  by  the  thunderbolt  of  the 
Most  High,  which  had  traced  on  its  face  the 
imprint  of  the  mask  which  I had  observed. 

“I  attributed  a mystical  signification  to  the 
conversations  of  the  warders  and  of  my  coim 
panions.  It  seemed  to  me  that  they  were 


88 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  representatives  of  all  the  races  of  the 
earth,  and  that  we  had  undertaken  between 
us  to  re-arrange  the  course  of  the  stars,  and 
to  give  a wider  development  to  the  system. 
An  error,  in  my  opinion,  had  crept  into  the 
general  combination  of  numbers,  and  thence 
came  all  the  ills  of  humanity.  I believed 
also  that  the  celestial  spirits  had  taken  human 
forms,  and  assisted  at  this  general  congress, 
seeming  though  they  did  to  be  concerned  with 
but  ordinary  occupations.  My  own  part 
seemed  to  me  to  be  the  re-establishment  of 
universal  harmony  by  Cabbalistic  art,  and  I 
had  to  seek  a solution  by  evoking  the  occult 
forces  of  various  religions.” 

So  far  we  have,  no  doubt,  the  confusions  of 
madness,  in  which  what  may  indeed  be  the 
symbol  is  taken  for  the  thing  itself.  But 
now  observe  what  follows: 

“I  seemed  to  myself  a hero  living  under  the 
very  eyes  of  the  gods;  everything  in  nature 
assumed  new  aspects,  and  secret  voices  came 
to  me  from  the  plants,  the  trees,  animals,  the 
meanest  insects,  to  warn  and  to  encourage  me. 
The  words  of  my  companions  had  mysterious 
messages,  the  sense  of  which  I alone  under- 


GERARD  de  nerval 


89 


stood;  things  without  form  and  without  life 
lent  themselves  to  the  designs  of  my  mind; 
out  of  combinations  of  stones,  the  figures  of 
angles,  crevices,  or  openings,  the  shape  of 
leaves,  out  of  colours,  odours,  and  sounds,  I 
saw  unknown  harmonies  come  forth.  ‘How 
is  it/  I said  to  myself,  ‘that  I can  possibly 
have  lived  so  long  outside  Nature,  without 
identifying  myself  with  her!  All  things  live, 
all  things  are  in  motion,  all  things  correspond; 
the  magnetic  rays  emanating  from  myself  or 
others  traverse  without  obstacle  the  infinite 
chain  of  created  things:  a transparent  net- 
work covers  the  world,  whose  loose  threads 
communicate  more  and  more  closely  with  the 
planets  and  the  stars.  Now  a captive  upon 
the  earth,  I hold  converse  with  the  starry 
choir,  which  is  feelingly  a part  of  my  joys  and 
sorrows.’  ” 

To  have  thus  realised  that  central  secret  of 
the  mystics,  from  Pythagoras  onwards,  the 
secret  which  the  Smaragdine  Tablet  of  Hermes 
betrays  in  its  “As  things  are  below,  so  are 
they  above”;  which  Boehme  has  classed  in 
his  teaching  of  “signatures,”  and  Sweden- 
borg has  systematised  in  his  doctrine  of 


90 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


“correspondences”;  does  it  matter  very  much 
that  he  arrived  at  it  by  way  of  the  obscure 
and  fatal  initiation  of  madness?  Truth,  and 
especially  that  soul  of  truth  which  is  poetry, 
may  be  reached  by  many  roads;  and  a road 
is  not  necessarily  misleading  because  it  is 
dangerous  or  forbidden.  Here  is  one  who 
has  gazed  at  light  till  it  has  blinded  him; 
and  for  us  all  that  is  important  is  that  he 
has  seen  something,  not  that  his  eyesight  has 
been  too  weak  to  endure  the  pressure  of  light 
overflowing  the  world  from  beyond  the  world. 

3 

And  here  we  arrive  at  the  fundamental 
principle  which  is  at  once  the  substance  and 
the  aesthetics  of  the  sonnets  “composed,”  as 
he  explains,  “in  that  state  of  meditation 
which  the  Germans  would  call  ‘ supernatural- 
istic.’”  In  one,  which  I will  quote,  he  is 
explicit,  and  seems  to  state  a doctrine. 

VERS  DORES 

Homme,  libre  penseur!  te  crois-tu  seul  pensant 
Dans  ce  monde  oil  la  vie  delate  en  toute  chose? 

Des  forces  que  tu  tiens  ta  liberty  dispose, 

Mais  de  tous  tes  conseils  l'univers  est  absent. 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 


91 


Respecte  dans  la  bete  un  esprit  agissant: 

Chaque  fleur  est  une  dme  h la  Nature  eclose; 

Un  mystere  d’amour  dans  le  metal  repose; 

“Tout  est  sensible!”  Et  tout  sur  ton  etre  est  puissant. 

Crains,  dans  le  mur  aveugle,  un  regard  qui  t’epie! 

A la  matiere  meme  un  verbe  est  attachd  . . . 

Ne  la  fais  pas  servir  a quelque  usage  impie! 

Souvent  dans  l’etre  obscur  habite  un  Dieu  cach4; 

Et  comme  un  oeil  naissant  couvert  par  ses  paupieres, 

Un  pur  esprit  s’accroit  sous  l’6corce  des  pierres! 

But  in  the  other  sonnets,  in  Artemis,  which 
I have  quoted,  in  El  Desdichado,  Myrtho, 
and  the  rest,  he  would  seem  to  be  deliberately 
obscure;  or  at  least,  his  obscurity  results,  to 
some  extent,  from  the  state  of  mind  which  he 
describes  in  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie:  “I  then  saw,! 
vaguely  drifting  into  form,  plastic  images  of 
antiquity,  which  outlined  themselves,  became 
definite,  and  seemed  to  represent  symbols,  of 
which  I only  seized  the  idea  with  difficulty.”^ 
Nothing  could  more  precisely  represent  the 
impression  made  by  these  sonnets,  in  which, 
for  the  first  time  in  French,  words  are  used  as 
the  ingredients  of  an  evocation,  as  themselves 
not  merely  colour  and  sound,  but  symbol. 
Here  are  words  which  create  an  atmosphere 
by  the  actual  suggestive  quality  of  their 


92 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


syllables,  as,  according  to  the  theory  of 
Mallarme,  they  should  do;  as,  in  the  recent 
attempts  of  the  Symbolists,  writer  after  writer 
has  endeavoured  to  lure  them  into  doing. 
Persuaded,  as  Gerard  was,  of  the  sensitive 
unity  of  all  nature,  he  was  able  to  trace 
resemblances  where  others  saw  only  diver- 
gences; and  the  setting  together  of  unfamiliar 
and  apparently  alien  things,  which  comes  so 
strangely  upon  us  in  his  verse,  was  perhaps 
an  actual  sight  of  what  it  is  our  misfortune 
not  to  see.  His  genius,  to  which  madness 
had  come  as  the  liberating,  the  precipitating, 
spirit,  disengaging  its  finer  essence,  consisted 
in  a power  of  materialising  vision,  whatever 
is  most  volatile  and  unseizable  in  vision 
and  without  losing  the  sense  of  mystery,  or 
that  quality  which  gives  its  charm  to  the 
intangible.  Madness,  then,  in  him,  had  lit 
up,  as  if  by  lightning-flashes,  the  hidden 
links  of  distant  and  divergent  things;  perhaps 
in  somewhat  the  same  manner  as  that  in 
which  a similarly  new,  startling,  perhaps  over- 
true sight  of  things  is  gained  by  the  artificial 
stimulation  of  haschisch,  opium,  and  those 
other  drugs  by  which  vision  is  produced  de- 


GERARD  de  nerval 


93 


liberately,  and  the  soul,  sitting  safe  within 
the  perilous  circle  of  its  own  magic,  looks 
out  on  the  panorama  which  either  rises  out 
of  the  darkness  before  it,  or  drifts  from  itself 
into  the  darkness.  The  very  imagery  of  these 
sonnets  is  the  imagery  which  is  known  to  all 
dreamers  of  bought  dreams.  Rose  au  cceur 
violet,  fleur  de  sainte  Gudule;  le  Temple  au 
peristyle  immense;  la  grotte  ou  nage  la  syrene: 
the  dreamer  of  bought  dreams  has  seen 
them  all.  But  no  one  before  Gerard  real- 
ised that  such  things  as  these  might  be  the 
basis  of  almost  a new  aesthetics.  Did  he 
himself  realise  all  that  he  had  done,  or  was 
it  left  for  Mallarm4  to  theorise  upon  what 
Gerard  had  but  divined? 

That  he  made  the  discovery,  there  is  no 
doubt;  and  we  owe  to  the  fortunate  accident 
of  madness  one  of  the  foundations  of  what 
may  be  called  the  practical  aesthetics  of 
Symbolism.  Look  again  at  that  sonnet  Arte- 
mis, and  you  will  see  in  it  not  only  the 
method  of  MallarmS,  but  much  of  the  most 
intimate  manner  of  Verlaine.  The  first  four 
lines,  with  their  fluid  rhythm,  their  repeti- 
tions and  echoes,  their  delicate  evasions, 


94 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


might  have  been  written  by  Verlaine;  in  the 
later  part  the  firmness  of  the  rhythms  and 
the  jewelled  significance  of  the  words  are  like 
Mallarme  at  his  finest,  so  that  in  a single 
sonnet  we  may  fairly  claim  to  see  a fore- 
shadowing of  the  styles  of  Mallarm6  and 
Verlaine  at  once.  With  Verlaine  the  re- 
semblance goes,  perhaps,  no  further;  with 
Mallarme  it  goes  to  the  very  roots,  the  whole 
man  being,  certainly,  his  style. 

Gerard  de  Nerval,  then,  had  divined,  before 
■ all  the  world,  that  poetry  should  be  a miracle; 
not  a hymn  to  beauty,  nor  the  description  of 
beauty,  nor  beauty’s  mirror;  but  beauty  itself, 
the  colour,  fragrance,  and  form  of  the  imag- 
ined flower,  as  it  blossoms  again  out  of  the 
page.  Vision,  the  over-powering  vision,  had 
come  to  him  beyond,  if  not  against,  his 
will;  and  he  knew  that  vision  is  the  root  out 
of  which  the  flower  must  grow.  Vision  had 
taught  him  symbol,  and  he  knew  that  it  is 
by  symbol  alone  that  the  flower  can  take 
visible  form.  He  knew  that  the  whole  mys- 
tery of  beauty  can  never  be  comprehended 
by  the  crowd,  and  that  while  clearness  is  a 
virtue  of  style,  perfect  explicitness  is  not  a 


GfiRARD  DE  NERVAL 


95 


necessary  virtue.  So  it  was  with  disdain,  as 
well  as  with  confidence,  that  he  allowed  these 
sonnets  to  be  overheard.  It  was  enough  for 
him  to  say: 

J’ai  rev6  dans  la  grotte  oil  nage  la  syrene; 

and  to  speak,  it  might  be,  the  siren’s  lan- 
guage, remembering  her.  “It  will  be  my 
last  madness,”  he  wrote,  “to  believe  myself 
a poet:  let  criticism  cure  me  of  it.”  Criti- 
cism, in  his  own  day,  even  Gautier’s  criticism, 
could  but  be  disconcerted  by  a novelty  so 
unexampled.  It  is  only  now  that  the  best 
critics  in  France  are  beginning  to  realise 
how  great  in  themselves,  and  how  great  in 
their  influence,  are  these  sonnets,  which, 
forgotten  by  the  world  for  nearly  fifty  years, 
have  all  the  while  been  secretly  bringing 
new  aesthetics  into  French  poetry. 


THEOPHILE  GAUTIER 


1 

Gautier  has  spoken  for  himself  in  a famous 
passage  of  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin:  “I  am 
a man  of  the  Homeric  age;  the  world  in 
which  I live  is  not  my  world,  and  I understand 
nothing  of  the  society  which  surrounds  me. 
For  me  Christ  did  not  come;  I am  as  much  a 
pagan  as  Alcibiades  or  Phidias.  I have  never 
plucked  on  Golgotha  the  flowers  of  the  Pas- 
sion, and  the  deep  stream  that  flows  from  the 
side  of  the  Crucified  and  sets  a crimson  girdle 
about  the  world,  has  never  washed  me  in  its 
flood;  my  rebellious  body  will  not  acknowledge 
the  supremacy  of  the  soul,  and  my  flesh  will 
not  endure  to  be  mortified.  I find  the  earth 
as  beautiful  as  the  sky,  and  I think  that  per- 
fection of  form  is  virtue.  I have  no  gift  for 
spirituality;  I prefer  a statue  to  a ghost,  full 
noon  to  twilight.  Three  things  delight  me: 
gold,  marble,  and  purple;  brilliance,  solidity, 

96 


THEOPHILE  GAUTIER 


97 


colour.  ...  I have  looked  on  love  in  the  light 
of  antiquity,  and  as  a piece  of  sculpture  more 
or  less  perfect.  ...  All  my  life  I have  been 
concerned  with  the  form  of  the  flagon,  never 
with  the  quality  of  its  contents.”  That  is 
part  of  a confession  of  faith,  and  it  is  spoken 
with  absolute  sincerity.  Gautier  knew  him- 
self, and  could  tell  the  truth  about  himself  as 
simply,  as  impartially,  as  if  he  had  been  de- 
scribing a work  of  art.  Or  is  he  not,  indeed, 
describing  a work  of  art?  Was  not  that  very 
state  of  mind,  that  finished  and  limited  tem- 
perament, a thing  which  he  had  collaborated 
with  nature  in  making,  with  an  effective  height- 
ening of  what  was  most  natural  to  him,  in  the 
spirit  of  art? 

Gautier  saw  the  world  as  mineral,  as  metal, 
as  pigment,  as  rock,  tree,  water,  as  architec- 
ture, costume,  under  sunlight,  gas,  in  all  the 
colours  that  light  can  bring  out  of  built  or 
growing  things;  he  saw  it  as  contour,  move- 
ment; he  saw  all  that  a painter  sees,  when  the 
painter  sets  himself  to  copy,  not  to  create. 
He  was  the  finest  copyist  who  ever  used  paint 
with  a pen.  Nothing  that  can  be  expressed 
in  technical  terms  escaped  him;  there  were  no 


98 


THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


technical  terms  which  he  could  not  reduce  to 
an  orderly  beauty.  But  he  absorbed  all  this 
visible  world  with  the  hardly  discriminating 
impartiality  of  the  retina;  he  had  no  moods, 
was  not  to  be  distracted  by  a sentiment,  heard 
no  voices,  saw  nothing  but  darkness,  the  nega- 
tion of  day,  in  night.  He  was  tirelessly  atten- 
tive, he  had  no  secrets  of  his  owrn  and  could  keep 
none  of  nature’s.  He  could  describe  every 
ray  of  the  nine  thousand  precious  stones  in 
the  throne  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  in  the  Treasury 
of  the  Kremlin;  but  he  could  tell  you  nothing 
of  one  of  Maeterlinck’s  bees. 

The  five  senses  made  Gautier  for  themselves, 
that  they  might  become  articulate.  He  speaks 
for  them  all  with  a dreadful  unconcern.  All 
his  words  are  in  love  with  matter,  and  they 
enjoy  their  lust  and  have  no  recollection.  If 
the  body  did  not  dwindle  and  expand  to  some 
ignoble  physical  conclusion;  if  wrinkles  did 
not  creep  yellowing  up  women’s  necks,  and  the 
fire  in  a man’s  blood  did  not  lose  its  heat;  he 
would  always  be  content.  Everything  that 
he  cared  for  in  the  world  wTas  to  be  had,  except, 
perhaps,  rest  from  striving  after  it;  only, 
everything  would  one  day  come  to  an  end, 


THEOPHILE  GAUTIER 


99 


after  a slow  spoiling.  Decrepit,  colourless, 
uneager  things  shocked  him,  and  it  was  with 
an  acute,  almost  disinterested  pity  that  he 
watched  himself  die. 

All  his  life  Gautier  adored  life,  and  all  the 
processes  and  forms  of  life.  A pagan,  a young 
Roman,  hard  and  delicate,  with  something  of 
cruelty  in  his  sympathy  with  things  that  could 
be  seen  and  handled,  he  would  have  hated  the 
soul,  if  he  had  ever  really  apprehended  it,  for 
its  qualifying  and  disturbing  power  upon  the 
body.  No  other  modern  writer,  no  writer 
perhaps,  has  described  nakedness  with  so  ab- 
stract a heat  of  rapture:  like  d’ Albert  when  he 
sees  Mile,  de  Maupin  for  the  first  and  last  time, 
he  is  the  artist  before  he  is  the  lover,  and  he  is 
the  lover  while  he  is  the  artist.  It  was  above 
all  things  the  human  body  whose  contours 
and  colours  he  wished  to  fix  for  eternity,  in  the 
“robust  art”  of  “verse,  marble,  onyx,  enamel.” 
And  it  was  not  the  body  as  a frail,  perishable 
thing,  and  a thing  to  be  pitied,  that  he  wanted 
to  perpetuate;  it  was  the  beauty  of  life  itself, 
imperishable  at  least  in  its  recurrence. 

He  loved  imperishable  things:  the  body,  as 
generation  after  generation  refashions  it,  the 


100  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


world,  as  it  is  restored  and  rebuilt,  and  then 
gems,  and  hewn  stone,  and  carved  ivory,  and 
woven  tapestry.  He  loved  verse  for  its  solid, 
strictly  limited,  resistant  form,  which,  while 
prose  melts  and  drifts  about  it,  remains  unal- 
terable, indestructible.  Words,  he  knew,  can 
build  as  strongly  as  stones,  and  not  merely 
rise  to  music,  like  the  walls  of  Troy,  but  be 
themselves  music  as  well  as  structure.  Yet, 
as  in  visible  things  he  cared  only  for  hard  out- 
line and  rich  colour,  so  in  words  too  he  had  no 
love  of  half-tints,  and  was  content  to  do  with- 
out that  softening  of  atmosphere  which  was 
to  be  prized  by  those  who  came  after  him  as 
the  thing  most  worth  seeking.  Even  his  verse 
is  without  mystery;  if  he  meditates,  his  medi- 
tation has  all  the  fixity  of  a kind  of  sharp,  pre- 
cise criticism. 

What  Gautier  saw  he  saw  with  unparalleled 
exactitude;  he  allows  himself  no  poetic  license 
or  room  for  fine  phrases;  has  his  eye  always  on 
the  object,  and  really  uses  the  words  which 
best  describe  it,  -whatever  they  may  be.  So 
his  books  of  travel  are  guide-books,  in  addition 
to  being  other  things;  and  not  by  any  means 
“states  of  soul”  or  states  of  nerves.  He  is 


THBOPHILE  GAUTIER 


101 


willing  to  give  you  information,  and  able  to 
give  it  to  you  without  deranging  his  periods. 
The  little  essay  on  Leonardo  is  an  admirable 
piece  of  artistic  divination,  and  it  is  also  a 
clear,  simple,  sufficient  account  of  the  man, 
his  temperament,  and  his  way  of  work.  The 
study  of  Baudelaire,  reprinted  in  the  edition 
definitive  of  the  “Fleurs  du  Mai,”  remains  the 
one  satisfactory  summing  up,  it  is  not  a solu- 
tion, of  the  enigma  which  Baudelaire  personi- 
fied; and  it  is  almost  the  most  coloured  and 
perfumed  thing  in  words  which  he  ever  wrote. 
He  wrote  equally  well  about  cities,  poets, 
novelists,  painters,  or  sculptors;  he  did  not 
understand  one  better  than  the  other,  or  feel 
less  sympathy  for  one  than  for  another.  He, 
the  “parfait  magicien  es  lettres  frangaises,” 
to  whom  faultless  words  came  in  faultlessly 
beautiful  order,  could  realise,  against  Balzac 
himself,  that  Balzac  had  a style:  “he  pos- 
sesses, though  he  did  not  think  so,  a style,  and 
a very  beautiful  style,  the  necessary,  inevitable, 
mathematical  style  of  his  ideas.”  He  appre- 
ciated Ingres  as  justly  as  he  appreciated  El 
Greco;  he  went  through  the  Louvre,  room 
by  room,  saying  the  right  thing  about  each 


102  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


painter  in  turn.  He  did  not  say  the  final 
thing;  he  said  nothing  which  we  have  to  pause 
and  think  over  before  we  see  the  whole  of  its 
truth  or  apprehend  the  whole  of  its  beauty. 
Truth,  in  him,  comes  to  us  almost  literally 
through  the  eyesight,  and  with  the  same  beau- 
tiful clearness  as  if  it  were  one  of  those  visible 
things  which  delighted  him  most:  gold,  mar- 
ble, and  purple;  brilliance,  solidity,  colour. 

1902. 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 


Salammbd  is  an  attempt,  as  Flaubert,  him- 
self his  best  critic,  has  told  us,  to  “perpetuate 
a mirage  by  applying  to  antiquity  the  methods 
of  the  modern  novel.”  By  the  modern  novel 
he  means  the  novel  as  he  had  reconstructed 
it;  he  means  Madame  Bovary.  That  perfect 
book  is  perfect  because  Flaubert  had,  for 
once,  found  exactly  the  subject  suited  to  his 
method,  had  made  his  method  and  his  sub- 
ject one.  On  his  scientific  side  Flaubert 
is  a realist,  but  there  is  another,  perhaps 
a more  intimately  personal  side,  on  which  he 
is  lyrical,  lyrical  in  a large,  sweeping  way. 
The  lyric  poet  in  him  made  La  Tentation 
de  Saint- Antoine,  the  analyst  made  L’ Educa- 
tion Sentimentale;  but  in  Madame  Bovary 
we  find  the  analyst  and  the  lyric  poet  in  equi- 
librium. It  is  the  history  of  a woman,  as 
carefully  observed  as  any  story  that  has  ever 
been  written,  and  observed  in  surroundings 
of  the  most  ordinary  kind.  But  Flaubert 


104  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 

finds  the  romantic  material  which  he  loved, 
the  materials  of  beauty,  in  precisely  that 
temperament  which  he  studies  so  patiently 
and  so  cruelly.  Madame  Bovary  is  a little 
woman,  half  vulgar  and  half  hysterical,  in- 
capable of  a fine  passion;  but  her  trivial 
desires,  her  futile  aspirations  after  second- 
rate  pleasures  and  second-hand  ideals,  give 
to  Flaubert  all  that  he  wants:  the  opportu- 
nity to  create  beauty  out  of  reality.  What 
is  common  in  the  imagination  of  Madame 
Bovary  becomes  exquisite  in  Flaubert’s  ren- 
dering of  it,  and  by  that  counterpoise  of  a 
commonness  in  the  subject  he  is  saved  from 
any  vague  ascents  of  rhetoric  in  his  rendering 
of  it. 

In  writing  Salammbo  Flaubert  set  himself 
to  renew  the  historical  novel,  as  he  had 
renewed  the  novel  of  manners.  He  would 
have  admitted,  doubtless,  that  perfect  suc- 
cess in  the  historical  novel  is  impossible,  by 
the  nature  of  the  case.  We  are  at  best  only 
half  conscious  of  the  reality  of  the  things 
about  us,  only  able  to  translate  them  approxi- 
mately into  any  form  of  art.  How  much  is 
left  over,  in  the  closest  transcription  of  a 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 


105 


mere  line  of  houses  in  a street,  of  a passing 
steamer,  of  one’s  next-door  neighbour,  of  the 
point  of  view  of  a foreigner  looking  along 
Piccadilly,  of  one’s  own  state  of  mind,  mo- 
ment by  moment,  as  one  walks  from  Oxford 
Circus  to  the  Marble  Arch?  Think,  then, 
of  the  attempts  to  reconstruct  no  matter  what 
period  of  the  past,  to  distinguish  the  differ- 
ence in  the  aspect  of  a world  perhaps  bossed 
with  castles  and  ridged  with  ramparts,  to 
two  individualities  encased  within  chain- 
armour!  Flaubert  chose  his  antiquity  wisely: 
a period  of  which  we  know  too  little  to  con- 
fuse us,  a city  of  which  no  stone  is  left  on 
another,  the  minds  of  Barbarians  who  have 
left  us  no  psychological  documents.  “Be  sure 
I have  made  no  fantastic  Carthage,”  he 
says  proudly,  pointing  to  his  documents: 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  who  has  furnished 
him  with  “the  exact  form  of  a door”;  the 
Bible  and  Theophrastus,  from  which  he  ob- 
tains his  perfumes  and  his  precious  stones; 
Gesenius,  from  whom  he  gets  his  Punic 
names;  the  Memoir es  de  VAcademie  des  In- 
scriptions. “As  for  the  temple  of  Tanit, 
I am  sure  of  having  reconstructed  it  as  it 


106  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


was,  with  the  treatise  of  the  Syrian  Goddess, 
with  the  medals  of  the  Due  de  Luynes,  with 
what  is  known  of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem, 
with  a passage  of  St.  Jerome,  quoted  by 

Seldon  (De  Diis  Syriis),  with  the  plan  of  the 
temple  of  Gozzo,  wdiich  is  quite  Carthaginian, 
and  best  of  all,  with  the  ruins  of  the  temple 
of  Thugga,  which  I have  seen  myself,  with 
my  own  eyes,  and  of  which  no  traveller  or 
antiquarian,  so  far  as  I know,  has  ever 

spoken.”  But  that,  after  all,  as  he  admits 
(when,  that  is,  he  has  proved  point  by  point 
his  minute  accuracy  to  all  that  is  known 
of  ancient  Carthage,  his  faithfulness  to  every 
indication  which  can  serve  for  his  guidance, 
his  patience  in  grouping  rather  than  his 

daring  in  the  invention  of  action  and  details), 
that  is  not  the  question.  “I  care  little  enough 
for  archaeology!  If  the  colour  is  not  uni- 

form, if  the  details  are  out  of  keeping,  if  the 
manners  do  not  spring  from  the  religion  and  the 
actions  from  the  passions,  if  the  characters 
are  not  consistent,  if  the  costumes  are  not 
appropriate  to  the  habits  and  the  architec- 
ture to  the  climate,  if,  in  a word,  there  is  not 
harmony,  I am  in  error.  If  not,  no.” 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 


107 


And  there,  precisely,  is  the  definition  of 
the  one  merit  which  can  give  a historical 
novel  the  right  to  exist,  and  at  the  same 
time  a definition  of  the  merit  which  sets 
Salammbo  above  all  other  historical  novels. 
Everything  in  the  book  is  strange,  some  of  it 
might  easily  be  bewildering,  some  revolting; 
but  all  is  in  harmony.  The  harmony  is  like 
that  of  Eastern  music,  not  immediately  con- 
veying its  charm,  or  even  the  secret  of  its 
measure,  to  Western  ears;  but  a monotony 
coiling  perpetually  upon  itself,  after  a severe 
law  of  its  own.  Or  rather,  it  is  like  a fresco, 
painted  gravely  in  hard,  definite  colours, 
firmly  detached  from  a background  of  burn- 
ing sky;  a procession  of  Barbarians,  each  in 
the  costume  of  his  country,  passes  across  the 
wall;  there  are  battles,  in  which  elephants 
fight  with  men;  an  army  besieges  a great 
city,  or  rots  to  death  in  a defile  between 
mountains;  the  ground  is  paved  with  dead 
men;  crosses,  each  bearing  its  living  burden, 
stand  against  the  sky;  a few  figures  of  men 
and  women  appear  again  and  again,  ex- 
pressing by  their  gestures  the  soul  of  the 
story. 


108  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Flaubert  himself  has  pointed,  with  his 
unerring  self-criticism,  to  the  main  defect  of 
his  book:  “The  pedestal  is  too  large  for  the 
statue.”  There  should  have  been,  as  he  says, 
a hundred  pages  more  about  Salammbo. 
He  declares:  “There  is  not  in  my  book  an 
isolated  or  gratuitous  description ; all  are 
useful  to  my  characters,  and  have  an  influ- 
ence, near  or  remote,  on  the  action.”  This  is 
true,  and  yet,  all  the  same,  the  pedestal  is 
too  large  for  the  statue.  Salammbo,  “always 
surrounded  with  grave  and  exquisite  things,” 
has  something  of  the  somnambulism  which 
enters  into  the  heroism  of  Judith;  she  has  a 
hieratic  beauty,  and  a consciousness  as  pale 
and  vague  as  the  moon  whom  she  worships. 
She  passes  before  us,  “her  body  saturated  with 
perfumes,”  encrusted  with  jewels  like  an  idol, 
her  head  turreted  with  violet  hair,  the  gold 
chain  tinkling  between  her  ankles;  and  is 
hardly  more  than  an  attitude,  a fixed  gesture, 
like  the  Eastern  women  whom  one  sees  passing, 
with  oblique  eyes  and  mouths  painted  into 
smiles,  their  faces  curiously  traced  into  a work 
of  art,  in  the  languid  movements  of  a panto- 
mimic dance.  The  soul  behind  those  eyes? 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 


109 


the  temperament  under  that  at  times  almost 
terrifying  mask?  Salammbo  is  as  inarticulate 
for  us  as  the  serpent,  to  whose  drowsy  beauty, 
capable  of  such  sudden  awakenings,  hers  seems 
half  akin;  they  move  before  us  in  a kind  of 
hieratic  pantomime,  a coloured,  expressive 
thing,  signifying  nothing.  Matho,  maddened 
with  love,  “in  an  invincible  stupor,  like  those 
who  have  drunk  some  draught  of  which  they 
are  to  die,”  has  the  same  somnambulistic  life; 
the  prey  of  Venus,  he  has  an  almost  literal 
insanity,  which,  as  Flaubert  reminds  us,  is 
true  to  the  ancient  view  of  that  passion.  He 
is  the  only  quite  vivid  person  in  the  book,  and 
he  lives  with  the  intensity  of  a wild  beast,  a 
life  “blinded  alike”  from  every  inner  and  outer 
interruption  to  one  or  two  fixed  ideas.  The 
others  have  their  places  in  the  picture,  fall  into 
their  attitudes  naturally,  remain  so  many  col- 
oured outlines  for  us.  The  illusion  is  perfect; 
these  people  may  not  be  the  real  people  of 
history,  but  at  least  they  have  no  self-con- 
sciousness, no  Christian  tinge  in  their  minds. 

“The  metaphors  are  few,  the  epithets  defi- 
nite,” Flaubert  tells  us,  of  his  style  in  this  book, 
where,  as  he  says,  he  has  sacrificed  less  “to 


110  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  amplitude  of  the  phrase  and  to  the  period,” 
than  in  Madame  Bovary.  The  movement 
here  is  in  briefer  steps,  with  a more  earnest 
gravity,  without  any  of  the  engaging  weak- 
ness of  adjectives.  The  style  is  never  archaic, 
it  is  absolutely  simple,  the  precise  word  being 
put  always  for  the  precise  thing;  but  it  ob- 
tains a dignity,  a historical  remoteness,  by  the 
large  seriousness  of  its  manner,  the  absence  of 
modern  ways  of  thought,  which,  in  Madame 
Bovary,  bring  with  them  an  instinctively 
modern  cadence. 

Salammbo  is  written  with  the  severity  of 
history,  but  Flaubert  notes  every  detail  vis- 
ually, as  a painter  notes  the  details  of  natural 
things.  A slave  is  being  flogged  under  a tree: 
Flaubert  notes  the  movement  of  the  thong  as 
it  flies,  and  tells  us:  “The  thongs,  as  they 
whistled  through  the  air,  sent  the  bark  of  the 
plane  trees  flying.”  Before  the  battle  of  the 
Macar,  the  Barbarians  are  awaiting  the  ap- 
proach of  the  Carthaginian  army.  First  “the 
Barbarians  were  surprised  to  see  the  ground 
undulate  in  the  distance.”  Clouds  of  dust 
rise  and  whirl  over  the  desert,  through  which 
are  seen  glimpses  of  horns,  and,  as  it  seems, 
wdngs.  Are  they  bulls  or  birds,  or  a mirage  of 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 


111 


the  desert?  The  Barbarians  watch  intently. 
“At  last  they  made  out  several  transverse  bars, 
bristling  with  uniform  points.  The  bars  be- 
came denser,  larger;  dark  mounds  swayed 
from  side  to  side;  suddenly  square  bushes 
came  into  view;  they  were  elephants  and 
lances.  A single  shout,  ‘The  Carthaginians!’ 
arose.”  Observe  how  all  that  is  seen,  as  if  the 
eyes,  unaided  by  the  intelligence,  had  found  out 
everything  for  themselves,  taking  in  one  indi- 
cation after  another,  instinctively.  Flaubert 
puts  himself  in  the  place  of  his  characters,  not 
so  much  to  think  for  them  as  to  see  for  them. 

Compare  the  style  of  Flaubert  in  each  of 
his  books,  and  you  will  find  that  each  book 
has  its  own  rhythm,  perfectly  appropriate 
to  its  subject-matter.  The  style,  which  has 
almost  every  merit  and  hardly  a fault,  becomes 
what  it  is  by  a process  very  different  from 
that  of  most  writers  careful  of  form.  Read 
Chateaubriand,  Gautier,  even  Baudelaire,  and 
you  will  find  that  the  aim  of  these  writers  has 
been  to  construct  a style  which  shall  be  adapt- 
able to  every  occasion,  but  without  structural 
change;  the  cadence  is  always  the  same.  The 
most  exquisite  word-painting  of  Gautier  can 
be  translated  rhythm  for  rhythm  into  English, 


112  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


without  difficulty;  once  you  have  mastered 
the  tune,  you  have  merely  to  go  on;  every 
verse  will  be  the  same.  But  Flaubert  is  so  dif- 
ficult to  translate  because  he  has  no  fixed 
rhythm;  his  prose  keeps  step  with  no  regular 
march-music.  He  invents  the  rhythm  of  every 
sentence,  he  changes  his  cadence  with  every 
mood  or  for  the  convenience  of  every  fact. 
He  has  no  theory  of  beauty  in  form  apart 
from  what  it  expresses.  For  him  form  is  a 
living  thing,  the  physical  body  of  thought, 
which  it  clothes  and  interprets.  “If  I call 
stones  blue,  it  is  because  blue  is  the  precise 
word,  believe  me,”  he  replies  to  Sainte-Beuve’s 
criticism.  Beauty  comes  into  his  words  from 
the  precision  with  which  they  express  definite 
things,  definite  ideas,  definite  sensations.  And 
in  his  book,  where  the  material  is  so  hard, 
apparently  so  unmalleable,  it  is  a beauty  of 
sheer  exactitude  which  fills  it  from  end  to  end, 
a beauty  of  measure  and  order,  seen  equally  in 
the  departure  of  the  doves  of  Carthage  at 
the  time  of  their  flight  into  Sicily,  and  in  the 
lions  feasting  on  the  corpses  of  the  Barbarians, 
in  the  defile  between  the  mountains. 


1901. 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


Baudelaire  is  little  known  and  much  mis- 
understood in  England.  Only  one  English 
writer  has  ever  done  him  justice,  or  said  any- 
thing adequate  about  him.  As  long  ago  as 
1862  Swinburne  introduced  Baudelaire  to  Eng- 
lish readers : in  the  columns  of  the  Spectator,  it 
is  amusing  to  remember.  In  1868  he  added  a 
few  more  words  of  just  and  subtle  praise  in  his 
book  on  Blake,  and  in  the  same  year  wrote  the 
magnificent  elegy  on  his  death,  Ave  atque  Vale. 
There  have  been  occasional  outbreaks  of  irrele- 
vant abuse  or  contempt,  and  the  name  of 
Baudelaire  (generally  misspelled)  is  the  journal- 
ist’s handiest  brickbat  for  hurling  at  random 
in  the  name  of  respectability.  Does  all  this 
mean  that  we  are  waking  up,  over  here,  to 
the  consciousness  of  one  of  the  great  literary 
forces  of  the  age,  a force  which  has  been  felt 
in  every  other  country  but  ours? 

It  would  be  a useful  influence  for  us.  Bau- 
delaire desired  perfection,  and  we  have  never 

113 


114  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


realised  that  perfection  is  a thing  to  aim  at. 
He  only  did  what  he  could  do  supremely  well, 
and  he  wras  in  poverty  all  his  life,  not  because 
he  would  not  work,  but  because  he  would  work 
only  at  certain  things,  the  things  which  he 
could  hope  to  do  to  his  own  satisfaction.  Of 
the  men  of  letters  of  our  age  he  was  the  most 
scrupulous.  He  spent  his  whole  life  in  writing 
one  book  of  verse  (out  of  which  all  French 
poetry  has  come  since  his  time),  one  book  of 
prose  in  which  prose  becomes  a fine  art,  some 
criticism  which  is  the  sanest,  subtlest,  and 
surest  which  his  generation  produced,  and  a 
translation  which  is  better  than  a marvellous 
original.  What  would  French  poetry  be  to- 
day if  Baudelaire  had  never  existed?  As 
different  a thing  from  wThat  it  is  as  English 
poetry  would  be  without  Rossetti.  Neither 
of  them  is  quite  among  the  greatest  poets, 
but  they  are  more  fascinating  than  the  greatest, 
they  influence  more  minds.  And  Baudelaire 
was  an  equally  great  critic.  He  discovered 
Poe,  Wagner,  and  Manet.  WThere  even  Sainte- 
Beuve,  with  his  vast  materials,  his  vast  gen- 
eral talent  for  criticism,  went  wrong  in  con- 
temporary judgments,  Baudelaire  was  infal- 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


115 


libly  right.  He  wrote  neither  verse  nor  prose 
with  ease,  but  he  would  not  permit  himself  to 
write  either  without  inspiration.  His  work 
is  without  abundance,  but  it  is  without  waste. 
It  is  made  out  of  his  whole  intellect  and  all  his 
nerves.  Every  poem  is  a train  of  thought  and 
every  essay  is  the  record  of  sensation.  This 
“romantic”  had  something  classic  in  his  mod- 
eration, a moderation  which  becomes  at  times 
as  terrifying  as  Poe’s  logic.  To  “cultivate 
one’s  hysteria”  so  calmly,  and  to  affront  the 
reader  ( Hypocrite  lecteur,  mon  semblable,  mon 
frere ) as  a judge  rather  than  as  a penitent; 
to  be  a casuist  in  confession;  to  be  so  much  a 
moralist,  with  so  keen  a sense  of  the  ecstasy 
of  evil:  that  has  always  bewildered  the  world, 
even  in  his  own  country,  where  the  artist  is 
allowed  to  live  as  experimentally  as  he  writes. 
Baudelaire  lived  and  died  solitary,  secret,  a 
confessor  of  sins  who  has  never  told  the  whole 
truth,  le  mauvais  moine  of  his  own  sonnet, 
an  ascetic  of  passion,  a hermit  of  the  brothel. 

To  understand,  not  Baudelaire,  but  what 
we  can  of  him,  we  must  read,  not  only  the 
four  volumes  of  his  collected  works,  but  every 
document  in  Cr6pet’s  ( Euvres  Posthumes,  and 


116  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


above  all,  the  letters,  and  these  have  only  now 
been  collected  into  a volume,  under  the  care 
of  an  editor  who  has  done  more  for  Baudelaire 
than  any  one  since  Crepet.  Baudelaire  put 
into  his  letters  only  what  he  cared  to  reveal  of 
himself  at  a given  moment:  he  has  a different 
angle  to  distract  the  sight  of  every  observer; 
and  let  no  one  think  that  he  knows  Baudelaire 
when  he  has  read  the  letters  to  Poulet-Malassis, 
the  friend  and  publisher,  to  whom  he  showed 
his  business  side,  or  the  letters  to  la  Pr6sidente, 
the  touchstone  of  his  spleen  et  ideal,  his  chief 
experiment  in  the  higher  sentiments.  Some 
of  his  carefully  hidden  virtues  peep  out  at 
moments,  it  is  true,  but  nothing  that  every- 
body has  not  long  been  aware  of.  We  hear 
of  his  ill-luck  with  money,  with  proof-sheets, 
with  his  own  health.  The  tragedy  of  the 
life  which  he  chose,  as  he  chose  all  things 
(poetry,  Jeanne  Duval,  the  “artificial  para- 
dises”) deliberately,  is  made  a little  clearer 
to  us;  we  can  moralise  over  it  if  we  like. 
But  the  man  remains  baffling,  and  will  prob- 
ably never  be  discovered. 

As  it  is,  much  of  the  value  of  the  book 
consists  in  those  glimpses  into  his  mind  and 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 


117 


intentions  which  he  allowed  people  now  and 
then  to  see.  Writing  to  Sainte-Beuve,  to 
Flaubert,  to  Soulary,  he  sometimes  lets  out, 
through  mere  sensitiveness  to  an  intelligence 
capable  of  understanding  him,  some  little 
interesting  secret.  Thus  it  is  to  Sainte- 
Beuve  that  he  defines  and  explains  the  origin 
and  real  meaning  of.  the  Petits  Poemes  en 
Prose:  Faire  cent  bagatelles  laborieuses  qui 
exigent  une  bonne  humeur  constante  (bonne 
humeur  necessaire,  meme  your  traiter  des 
sujets  tristes),  une  excitation  bizarre  qui  a 
besoin  de  spectacles,  de  foules,  de  musiques, 
de  reverberes  meme,  voila  ce  que  j’ai  voulu 
faire!  And,  writing  to  some  obscure  person, 
he  will  take  the  trouble  to  be  even  more 
explicit,  as  in  this  symbol  of  the  sonnet: 
Avez-vous  observe  qu’un  morceau  de  del  apergu 
par  un  soupirail,  ou  entre  deux  cheminees, 
deux  rockers,  ou  par  une  arcade,  donnait 
une  idee  plus  profonde  de  Vinfini  que  le  grand 
panorama  vu  du  haut  d’une  montagne?  It 
is  to  another  casual  person  that  he  speaks 
out  still  more  intimately  (and  the  occasion 
of  his  writing  is  some  thrill  of  gratitude 
towards  one  who  had  at  last  done  “a  little 


118  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


justice,”  not  to  himself,  but  to  Manet):  Eh 
Men!  on  m' accuse,  moi,  d’imiter  Edgar  Poe! 
Savez-vous  pourquoi  j’ai  si  patiemment  traduit 
Poe ? Parce  qu’il  me  resemblait.  La  pre- 
miere fois  que  j’ai  ouvert  un  lime  de  lui,  j’ai 
vu  avec  epouvante  et  ravissement,  non  seule- 
ment  des  sujets  reves  par  moi,  mais  des  phrases, 
pensees  par  moi,  et  ecrites  par  lui,  vingt  ans 
auparavant.  It  is  in  such  glimpses  as  these 
that  we  see  something  of  Baudelaire  in  his 
letters. 

1906. 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT 


My  first  visit  to  Edmond  de  Goncourt 
was  in  May,  1892.  I remember  my  immense 
curiosity  about  that  “ House  Beautiful/’  at 
Auteuil,  of  which  I had  heard  so  much,  and 
my  excitement  as  I rang  the  bell,  and  was 
shown  at  once  into  the  garden,  where  Gon- 
court was  just  saying  good-bye  to  some 
friends.  He  was  carelessly  dressed,  without 
a collar,  and  with  the  usual  loosely  knotted 
large  white  scarf  rolled  round  his  neck.  He 
was  wearing  a straw  hat,  and  it  was  only 
afterwards  that  I could  see  the  fine  sweep  of 
the  white  hair,  falling  across  the  forehead.  I 
thought  him  the  most  distinguished-looking 
man  of  letters  I had  ever  seen;  for  he  had 
at  once  the  distinction  of  race,  of  fine  breed- 
ing, and  of  that  delicate  artistic  genius 
which,  with  him,  was  so  intimately  a part  of 
things  beautiful  and  distinguished.  He  had 
the  eyes  of  an  old  eagle;  a general  air  of 
dignified  collectedness;  a rare,  and  a rarely 


130  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


charming,  smile,  which  came  out,  like  a ray 
of  sunshine,  in  the  instinctive  pleasure  of 
having  said  a witty  or  graceful  thing  to 
which  one’s  response  had  been  immediate. 
When  he  took  me  indoors,  into  that  house 
which  was  a museum,  I noticed  the  delicacy 
of  his  hands,  and  the  tenderness  with  which 
he  handled  his  treasures,  touching  them  as 
if  he  loved  them,  with  little,  unconscious 
murmurs:  Quel  gout!  quel  gout!  These  rose- 
coloured  rooms,  with  their  embroidered  ceil- 
ings, wTere  filled  with  cabinets  of  beautiful 
things,  Japanese  carvings,  and  prints  (the 
miraculous  “Plongeuses”!),  ahvays  in  perfect 
condition  ( Je  cherche  le  beau);  albums  had 
been  made  for  him  in  Japan,  and  in  these  he 
inserted  prints,  mounting  others  upon  silver 
and  gold  paper,  winch  formed  a sort  of 
frame.  He  showed  me  his  eighteenth- 
century  designs,  among  winch  I remember 
his  pointing  out  one  (a  Chardin,  I think)  as 
the  first  he  had  ever  bought;  he  had  been 
sixteen  at  the  time,  and  he  bought  it  for 
twelve  francs. 

When  wre  came  to  the  study,  the  room  in 
which  he  wrorked,  he  showed  me  all  of  his  own 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT  121 


first  editions,  carefully  bound,  and  first  edi- 
tions of  Flaubert,  Baudelaire,  Gautier,  with 
those,  less  interesting  to  me,  of  the  men  of 
later  generations.  He  spoke  of  himself  and 
his  brother  with  a serene  pride,  which  seemed 
to  me  perfectly  dignified  and  appropriate; 
and  I remember  his  speaking  (with  a paren- 
thetic disdain  of  the  brouillard  scandinave, 
in  which  it  seemed  to  him  that  France  was 
trying  to  envelop  herself ; at  the  best  it 
would  be  but  un  mauvais  brouillard ) of  the 
endeavour  which  he  and  his  brother  had 
made  to  represent  the  only  thing  worth  rep- 
resenting, le  vie  vecue,  la  vraie  verite.  As 
in  painting,  he  said,  all  depends  on  the  way 
of  seeing,  Voptique:  out  of  twenty-four  men 
who  will  describe  what  they  have  all  seen, 
it  is  only  the  twenty-fourth  who  will  find 
the  right  way  of  expressing  it.  “There  is  a 
true  thing  I have  said  in  my  journal,”  he  went 
on.  “The  thing  is,  to  find  a lorgnette”  (and 
he  put  up  his  hands  to  his  eyes,  adjusting  them 
carefully)  “through  which  to  see  things.  My 
brother  and  I invented  a lorgnette,  and  the 
young  men  have  taken  it  from  us.” 

How  true  that  is,  and  how  significantly  it 


122  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


states  just  what  is  most  essential  in  the 
work  of  the  Goncourts!  It  is  a new  way  of 
seeing,  literally  a new  way  of  seeing,  which 
they  have  invented;  and  it  is  in  the  inven- 
tion of  this  that  they  have  invented  that 
“new  language”  of  which  purists  have  so 
long,  so  vainly,  and  so  thanklessly  complained. 
You  remember  that  saying  of  Masson,  the 
mask  of  Gautier,  in  Charles  Demailly:  “I 
am  a man  for  whom  the  visible  world  exists.” 
Well,  that  is  true,  also,  of  the  Goncourts; 
but  in  a different  way. 

“The  delicacies  of  fine  literature,”  that 
phrase  of  Pater  always  comes  into  my  mind 
when  I think  of  the  Goncourts;  and  indeed 
Pater  seems  to  me  the  only  English  writer 
who  has  ever  handled  language  at  all  in 
their  manner  or  spirit.  I frequently  heard 
Pater  refer  to  certain  of  their  books,  to 
Madame  Gervaisais,  to  L’ Art  du  XVIIP 
Siecle,  to  Cherie;  with  a passing  objection 
to  what  he  called  the  “immodesty”  of  this 
last  book,  and  a strong  emphasis  in  the 
assertion  that  “that  was  how  it  seemed  to 
him  a book  should  be  written.”  I repeated 
this  once  to  Goncourt,  trying  to  give  him 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT  123 


some  idea  of  what  Pater’s  work  was  like; 
and  he  lamented  that  his  ignorance  of  Eng- 
lish prevented  him  from  what  he  instinc- 
tively realised  would  be  so  intimate  an  en- 
joyment. Pater  was  of  course  far  more 
scrupulous,  more  limited,  in  his  choice  of 
epithet,  less  feverish  in  his  variations  of 
cadence;  and  naturally  so,  for  he  dealt  with 
another  subject-matter  and  was  careful  of 
another  kind  of  truth.  But  with  both  there 
was  that  passionately  intent  preoccupation 
with  “the  delicacies  of  fine  literature”;  both 
achieved  a style  of  the  most  personal  sin- 
cerity: tout  grand  ecrivain  de  tons  les  temps, 
said  Goncourt,  ne  se  reconnatt  absolument 
qu’a  cela,  c’est  qu’il  a une  langue  personnelle, 
une  langue  dont  chaque  page,  chaque  ligne,  est 
signee,  pour  le  lecteur  lettre,  comme  si  son  nom 
etait  au  has  de  cette  page,  de  cette  ligne:  and 
this  style,  in  both,  was  accused,  by  the  “lit- 
erary” criticism  of  its  generation,  of  being 
insincere,  artificial,  and  therefore  reprehensible. 

It  is  difficult,  in  speaking  of  Edmond  de 
Goncourt,  to  avoid  attributing  to  him  the 
whole  credit  of  the  work  which  has  so  long 
borne  his  name  alone.  That  is  an  error 


124  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


which  he  himself  would  never  have  pardoned. 
Mon  frere  et  moi  was  the  phrase  constantly 
on  his  lips,  and  in  his  journal,  his  prefaces, 
he  has  done  full  justice  to  the  vivid  and 
admirable  qualities  of  that  talent  which, 
all  the  same,  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
lesser,  the  more  subservient,  of  the  two. 
Jules,  I think,  had  a more  active  sense  of 
life,  a more  generally  human  curiosity;  for 
the  novels  of  Edmond,  written  since  his 
brother’s  death,  have,  in  even  that  exces- 
sively specialised  world  of  their  common 
observation,  a yet  more  specialised  choice 
and  direction.  But  Edmond,  there  is  no 
doubt,  was  in  the  strictest  sense  the  writer; 
and  it  is  above  all  for  the  qualities  of  its 
writing  that  the  work  of  the  Goncourts  will 
live.  It  has  been  largely  concerned  with 
truth — truth  to  the  minute  details  of  human 
character,  sensation,  and  circumstance,  and 
also  of  the  document,  the  exact  words,  of 
the  past;  but  this  devotion  to  fact,  to  the 
curiosities  of  fact,  has  been  united  with  an 
even  more  persistent  devotion  to  the  curi- 
osities of  expression.  They  have  invented  a 
new  language:  that  was  the  old  reproach 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT  125 


against  them;  let  it  be  their  distinction. 
Like  all  writers  of  an  elaborate  carefulness, 
they  have  been  accused  of  sacrificing  both 
truth  and  beauty  to  deliberate  eccentricity. 
Deliberate  their  style  certainly  was;  ec- 
centric it  may,  perhaps,  sometimes  have 
been;  but  deliberately  eccentric,  no.  It  was 
their  belief  that  a writer  should  have  a per- 
sonal style,  a style  as  peculiar  to  himself 
as  his  handwriting;  and  indeed  I seem  to 
see  in  the  handwriting  of  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court  just  the  characteristics  of  his  style. 
Every  letter  is  formed  carefully,  separately, 
with  a certain  elegant  stiffness;  it  is  beauti- 
ful, formal,  too  regular  in  the  ‘‘continual 
slight  novelty”  of  its  form  to  be  quite  clear 
at  a glance:  very  personal,  very  distinguished 
writing. 

It  may  be  asserted  that  the  Goncourts  are 
not  merely  men  of  genius,  but  are  perhaps 
the  typical  men  of  letters  of  the  close  of  our 
century.  They  have  all  the  curiosities  and 
the  acquirements,  the  new  weaknesses  and 
the  new  powers,  that  belong  to  our  age; 
and  they  sum  up  in  themselves  certain  theories, 
aspirations,  ways  of  looking  at  things,  notions 


126  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


of  literary  duty  and  artistic  conscience,  which 
have  only  lately  become  at  all  actual,  and 
some  of  which  owe  to  them  their  very  origin. 
To  be  not  merely  novelists  (inventing  a new 
kind  of  novel),  but  historians;  not  merely 
historians,  but  the  historians  of  a particular 
century,  and  of  what  was  intimate  and  what 
is  unknown  in  it;  to  be  also  discriminating, 
indeed  innovating  critics  of  art,  but  of  a cer- 
tain section  of  art,  the  eighteenth  century,  in 
France  and  in  Japan;  to  collect  pictures  and 
bibelots,  beautiful  things,  always  of  the  French 
and  Japanese  eighteenth  century:  these  ex- 
cursions in  so  many  directions,  with  their 
audacities  and  their  careful  limitations,  their 
bold  novelty  and  their  scrupulous  exactitude 
in  detail,  are  characteristic  of  what  is  the 
finest  in  the  modern  conception  of  culture  and 
the  modern  ideal  in  art.  Look,  for  instance, 
at  the  Goncourts’  view  of  history.  Quand  les 
civilisations  commencent,  quand  les  peuples 
se  forment,  Vhistoire  est  drame  ou  geste.  . . . 
Les  siecles  qui  ont  precede  notre  siecle  ne  de- 
mandaient  a Vhistorien  que  le  personnage  de 
Vhomme,  et  le  portrait  de  son  genie.  . . . Le 
XIXe  siecle  demande  Vhomme  qui  etait  cet  homme 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOUET  127 


d’Etat,  cet  homme  de  guerre , ce  poete,  ce  peintre, 
ce  grand  homme  de  science  ou  de  metier.  L’ame 
qui  etait  en  cet  acteur,  le  coeur  qui  a vecu  derriere 
cet  esprit,  il  les  exige  et  les  reclame;  et  s’il  ne 
pent  recueillir  tout  cet  etre  moral,  toute  la  vie 
interieure,  il  commande  du  moins  qu’on  lui  en 
apporte  une  trace,  un  jour,  un  lambeau , une 
relique.  From  this  theory,  this  conviction, 
came  that  marvellous  series  of  studies  in  the 
eighteenth  century  in  France  (La  Femme  au 
XVIII e Siecle,  Portraits  intimes  du  XVIIF 
Siecle,  La  du  Barry,  and  the  others),  made 
entirely  out  of  documents,  autograph  letters, 
scraps  of  costume,  engravings,  songs,  the  un- 
conscious self-revelations  of  the  time,  forming, 
as  they  justly  say,  Vhistoire  intime;  Pest  ce 
roman  vrai  que  la  posterity  appellera  peut- 
etre  un  jour  Vhistoire  humaine.  To  be  the 
bookworm  and  the  magician;  to  give  the  actual 
documents,  but  not  to  set  barren  fact  by  barren 
fact;  to  find  a soul  and  a voice  in  documents, 
to  make  them  more  living  and  more  charming 
than  the  charm  of  life  itself:  that  is  what 
the  Goncourts  have  done.  And  it  is  through 
this  conception  of  history  that  they  have 
found  their  way  to  that  new  conception  of 


128  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  novel  which  has  revolutionised  the  entire 
art  of  fiction. 

Aujourd’hui,  they  wrote,  in  1864,  in  the 
preface  to  Germinie  Lacerteux,  que  le  Roman 
s’elargit  et  grandit,  qu’il  commence  a etre  la 
grande  forme  serieuse,  passionnee,  vivante,  de 
I’etude  litteraire  et  de  Venquete  sociale,  qu’il 
devient,  par  V analyse  et  par  la  recherche  psycho- 
logique,  VHistoire  morale  contemporaine,  au- 
jourd'hui que  le  Roman  s’est  impose  les  devoirs 
de  la  science,  il  peut  en  revendiquer  les  libertes 
et  les  franchises.  Le  public  aime  les  romans 
faux,  is  another  brave  declaration  in  the  same 
preface;  ce  roman  est  un  roman  vrrai.  But 
what,  precisely,  is  it  that  the  Goncourts  under- 
stood by  un  roman  vrai?  The  old  notion  of 
the  novel  was  that  it  should  be  an  entertaining 
record  of  incidents  or  adventures  told  for  their 
own  sake;  a plain,  straightforward  narrative  of 
facts,  the  aim  being  to  produce  as  nearly  as 
possible  an  effect  of  continuity,  of  nothing 
having  been  omitted,  the  statement,  so  to 
speak,  of  a witness  on  oath;  in  a wTord,  it  is 
the  same  as  the  old  notion  of  history,  drarne 
ou  geste.  That  is  not  how  the  Goncourts  ap- 
prehend life,  or  how  they  conceive  it  should  be 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT  129 


rendered.  As  in  the  study  of  history  they  seek 
mainly  the  inedit,  caring  only  to  record  that, 
so  it  is  the  inedit  of  life  that  they  conceive  to 
be  the  main  concern,  the  real  “inner  history.” 
And  for  them  the  inedit  of  life  consists  in  the 
noting  of  the  sensations;  it  is  of  the  sensations 
that  they  have  resolved  to  be  the  historians; 
not  of  action,  nor  of  emotion,  properly  speak- 
ing, nor  of  moral  conceptions,  but  of  an  inner 
life  which  is  all  made  up  of  the  perceptions  of 
the  senses.  It  is  scarcely  too  paradoxical  to 
say  that  they  are  psychologists  for  whom  the 
soul  does  not  exist.  One  thing,  they  know, 
exists:  the  sensation  flashed  through  the  brain, 
the  image  on  the  mental  retina.  Having 
found  that,  they  bodily  omit  all  the  rest  as  of 
no  importance,  trusting  to  their  instinct  of 
selection,  of  retaining  all  that  really  matters. 
It  is  the  painter’s  method,  a selection  made 
almost  visually;  the  method  of  the  painter 
who  accumulates  detail  on  detail,  in  his  patient, 
many-sided  observation  of  his  subject,  and 
then  omits  everything  which  is  not  an  essential 
part  of  the  ensemble  which  he  sees.  Thus  the 
new  conception  of  what  the  real  truth  of  things 
consist  in  has  brought  with  it,  inevitably,  an 


130  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


entirely  new  form,  a breaking  up  of  the  plain, 
straightforward  narrative  into  chapters,  which 
are  generally  quite  disconnected,  and  some- 
times of  less  than  a page  in  length.  A very 
apt  image  of  this  new,  curious  manner  of  nar- 
rative has  been  found,  somewhat  maliciously, 
by  M.  Lemaitre.  Un  homme  qui  marche  a 
Vinterieur  d’une  maison,  si  nous  regardons  du 
dehors,  apparait  successivement  a chaque  fenetre, 
et  dans  les  intervalles  nous  echappe.  Cesfenetres, 
ce  sont  les  chapitres  de  MM.  de  Goncourt. 
Encore,  he  adds,  y a-t-il  plusieurs  de  ces  fenetres 
ou  Vhomme  que  nous  attendions  ne  passe  point. 
That,  certainly,  is  the  danger  of  the  method. 
No  doubt  the  Goncourts,  in  their  passion  for 
the  inedit,  leave  out  certain  things  because  they 
are  obvious,  even  if  they  are  obviously  true 
and  obviously  important;  that  is  the  defect  of 
their  quality.  To  represent  life  by  a series 
of  moments,  and  to  choose  these  moments  for 
a certain  subtlety  and  rarity  in  them,  is  to 
challenge  grave  perils.  Nor  are  these  the 
only  perils  which  the  Goncourts  have  con- 
stantly before  them.  There  are  others,  essen- 
tial to  their  natures,  to  their  preferences. 
And,  first  of  all,  as  we  may  see  on  every  page 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  CONCOURT  131 


of  that  miraculous  Journal , which  will  remain, 
doubtless,  the  truest,  deepest,  most  poignant 
piece  of  human  history  that  they  have  ever 
written,  they  are  sick  men,  seeing  life  through 
the  medium  of  diseased  nerves.  Notre  ceuvre 
entier,  writes  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  repose 
sur  la  maladie  nerveuse;  les  peintures  de  la 
maladie,  nous  les  avons  tirees  de  nous-memes, 
et,  a,  force  de  nous  dissequer,  nous  sommes 
arrives  a une  sensitivite  supra-aigue  que  blessaient 
les  infiniment  petits  de  la  vie.  This  unhealthy 
sensitiveness  explains  much,  the  singular  merits 
as  well  as  certain  shortcomings  or  deviations, 
in  their  work.  The  Goncourts’  vision  of 
reality  might  almost  be  called  an  exaggerated 
sense  of  the  truth  of  things;  such  a sense  as 
diseased  nerves  inflict  upon  one,  sharpening 
the  acuteness  of  every  sensation;  or  somewhat 
such  a sense  as  one  derives  from  haschisch, 
which  simply  intensifies,  yet  in  a veiled  and 
fragrant  way,  the  charm  or  the  disagreeable- 
ness of  outward  things,  the  notion  of  time,  the 
notion  of  space.  What  the  Goncourts  paint 
is  the  subtler  poetry  of  reality,  its  unusual 
aspects,  and  they  evoke  it,  fleetingly,  like 
WTistler;  they  do  not  render  it  in  hard  outline, 


132  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


like  Flaubert,  like  Manet.  As  in  the  world  of 
Whistler,  so  in  the  world  of  the  Goncouxjts, 
we  see  cities  in  which  there  are  always  fire- 
works at  Cremorne,  and  fair  women  reflected 
beautifully  and  curiously  in  mirrors.  It  is 
a world  which  is  extraordinarily  real;  but 
there  is  choice,  there  is  curiosity,  in  the  aspect 
of  reality  which  it  presents. 

Compare  the  descriptions,  which  form  so 
large  a part  of  the  work  of  the  Goncourts, 
with  those  of  Theophile  Gautier,  who  may 
reasonably  be  said  to  have  introduced  the 
practice  of  eloquent  writing  about  places,  and 
also  the  exact  description  of  them.  Gautier 
describes  miraculously,  but  it  is,  after  all,  the 
ordinary  observation  carried  to  perfection,  or, 
rather,  the  ordinary  pictorial  observation. 
The  Goncourts  only  tell  you  the  things  that 
Gautier  leaves  out;  they  find  new,  fantastic 
points  of  view,  discover  secrets  in  things,  curi- 
osities of  beauty,  often  acute,  distressing,  in  the 
aspects  of  quite  ordinary  places.  They  see 
things  as  an  artist,  an  ultra-subtle  artist  of  the 
impressionist  kind,  might  see  them;  seeing 
them  indeed  always  very  consciously  with  a 
deliberate  attempt  upon  them,  in  just  that 


EDMOND  AND  JULES  DE  GONCOURT  133 


partial,  selecting,  creative  way  in  which  an 
artist  looks  at  things  for  the  purpose  of 
painting  a picture.  In  order  to  arrive  at 
their  effects,  they  shrink  from  no  sacrifice, 
from  no  excess;  slang,  neologism,  forced 
construction,  archaism,  barbarous  epithet, 
nothing  comes  amiss  to  them,  so  long  as  it 
tends  to  render  a sensation.  Their  unique 
care  is  that  the  phrase  should  live,  should 
palpitate,  should  be  alert,  exactly  expressive, 
super-subtle  in  expression;  and  they  prefer 
indeed  a certain  perversity  in  their  relations 
with  language,  which  they  would  have  not 
merely  a passionate  and  sensuous  thing,  but 
complex  with  all  the  curiosities  of  a delicately 
depraved  instinct.  It  is  the  accusation  of  the 
severer  sort  of  French  critics  that  the  Gon- 
courts  have  invented  a new  language;  that 
the  language  which  they  use  is  no  longer  the 
calm  and  faultless  French  of  the  past.  It  is 
true;  it  is  their  distinction;  it  is  the  most 
wonderful  of  all  their  inventions:  in  order  to 
render  new  sensations,  a new  vision  of  things, 
they  have  invented  a new  language. 

1894,  1896. 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


A chacun  son  infini 

1 

Count  Philippe  Auguste  Mathias  de 
Villiers  de  L’Isle-Adam  was  born  at  St. 
Brieuc,  in  Brittany,  November  28,  1838;  he 
died  at  Paris,  under  the  care  of  the  Freres 
Saint-Jean-de-Dieu,  August  19,  1889.  Even 
before  his  death,  his  life  had  become  a 
legend,  and  the  legend  is  even  now  not  to 
be  disentangled  from  the  actual  occurrences 
of  an  existence  so  heroically  visionary.  The 
Don  Quixote  of  idealism,  it  was  not  only 
in  philosophical  terms  that  life,  to  him, 
was  the  dream,  and  the  spiritual  world  the 
reality;  he  lived  his  faith,  enduring  what 
others  called  reality  with  contempt,  when- 
ever, for  a moment,  he  becomes  conscious 
of  it.  The  basis  of  the  character  of  Villiers 
was  pride,  and  it  was  pride  which  covered 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


135 


more  than  the  universe.  And  this  pride,  first 
of  all,  was  the  pride  of  race. 

Descendant  of  the  original  Rodolphe  le 
Bel,  Seigneur  de  Villiers  (1067),  through 
Jean  de  Villiers  and  Maria  de  l’lsle  and 
their  son  Pierre  the  first  Villiers  de  l’lsle- 
Adam,  a Villiers  de  l’lsle-Adam,  born  in 
1384,  had  been  Marshal  of  France  under 
Jean-sans-Peur,  Duke  of  Burgundy;  he  took 
Paris  during  the  civil  war,  and  after  being 
imprisoned  in  the  Bastille,  reconquered  Pon- 
toise  from  the  English,  and  helped  to  recon- 
quer Paris.  Another  Villiers  de  1’ Isle- Adam, 
born  in  1464,  Grand  Master  of  the  Order  of 
St.  John  of  Jerusalem,  defended  Rhodes 
against  200,000  Turks  for  a whole  year,  in 
one  of  the  most  famous  sieges  in  history; 
it  was  he  who  obtained  from  Charles  V. 
the  concession  of  the  isle  of  Malta  for  his 
Order,  henceforth  the  Order  of  the  Knights 
of  Malta. 

For  Villiers,  to  whom  time,  after  all,  was 
but  a metaphysical  abstraction,  the  age  of 
the  Crusaders  had  not  passed.  From  a de- 
scendant of  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Knights 
of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem,  the  nineteenth 


136  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


century  demanded  precisely  the  virtues  which 
the  sixteenth  century  had  demanded  of  that 
ancestor.  And  these  virtues  were  all  summed 
up  in  one  word,  which,  in  its  double  sig- 
nificance, single  to  him,  covered  the  whole 
attitude  of  life:  the  word  “nobility.”  No 
word  returns  oftener  to  the  lips  in  speak- 
ing of  wrhat  is  most  characteristic  in  his 
work,  and  to  Villiers  moral  and  spiritual 
nobility  seemed  but  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  that  other  kind  of  nobility  by 
which  he  seemed  to  himself  still  a Knight 
of  the  Order  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem.  It 
was  his  birthright. 

To  the  aristocratic  conception  of  things, 
nobility  of  soul  is  indeed  a birthright,  and 
the  pride  with  which  this  gift  of  nature  is 
accepted  is  a pride  of  exactly  the  opposite 
kind  to  that  democratic  pride  to  which 
nobility  of  soul  is  a conquest,  valuable  in 
proportion  to  its  difficulty.  This  duality, 
always  essentially  aristocratic  and  democratic, 
typically  Eastern  and  Western  also,  finds  its 
place  in  every  theory  of  religion,  philosophy, 
and  the  ideal  fife.  The  pride  of  being,  the 
pride  of  becoming:  these  are  the  two  ulti- 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ ISLE-AD  AM 


137 


mate  contradictions  set  before  every  idealist. 
Villiers’  choice,  inevitable  indeed,  was  sig- 
nificant. In  this  measure,  it  must  always  be 
the  choice  of  the  artist,  to  whom,  in  his 
contemplation  of  life,  the  means  is  often  so 
much  more  important  than  the  end.  That 
nobility  of  soul  which  comes  without  effort, 
which  comes  only  with  an  unrelaxed  dili- 
gence over  oneself,  that  I should  be  I:  there 
can  at  least  be  no  comparison  of  its  beauty 
with  the  stained  and  dusty  onslaught  on  a 
never  quite  conquered  fort  of  the  enemy, 
in  a divided  self.  And,  if  it  be  permitted 
to  choose  among  degrees  of  sanctity,  that, 
surely,  is  the  highest  in  which  a natural 
genius  for  such  things  accepts  its  own  attain- 
ment with  the  simplicity  of  a birthright. 

And  the  Catholicism  of  Villiers  was  also 
a part  of  his  inheritance.  His  ancestors  had 
fought  for  the  Church,  and  Catholicism  was 
still  a pompous  flag,  under  which  it  was 
possible  to  fight  on  behalf  of  the  spirit, 
against  that  materialism  wThich  is  always,  in 
one  way  or  another,  atheist.  Thus  he  dedi- 
cates one  of  his  stories  to  the  Pope,  chooses 
ecclesiastical  splendours  by  preference  among 


138  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  many  splendours  of  the  world  which  go 
to  make  up  his  stage-pictures,  and  is  learned 
in  the  subtleties  of  the  Fathers.  The  Church 
is  his  favourite  symbol  of  austere  intellectual 
beauty;  one  way,  certainly,  by  which  the 
temptations  of  external  matter  may  be  van- 
quished, and  a way,  also,  by  which  the  desire 
of  worship  may  be  satisfied. 

But  there  was  also,  in  his  attitude  towards 
the  mysteries  of  the  spiritual  wrorld,  that 
“forbidden  ” curiosity  which  had  troubled 
the  obedience  of  the  Templars,  and  which 
came  to  him,  too,  as  a kind  of  knightly  qual- 
ity. Whether  or  not  he  was  actually  a 
Cabbalist,  questions  of  magic  began,  at  an 
early  age,  to  preoccupy  him,  and,  from  the 
first  wild  experiment  of  Isis  to  the  deliberate 
summing  up  of  Axel,  the  “occult”  world 
finds  its  way  into  most  of  his  pages. 

Fundamentally,  the  belief  of  Villiers  is 
the  belief  common  to  all  Eastern  mystics.1 
“Know,  once  for  all,  that  there  is  for  thee 
no  other  universe  than  that  conception  thereof 

1 “I  am  far  from  sure,”  wrote  Verlaine,  “that  the  phil- 
osophy of  Villiers  will  not  one  day  become  the  formula  of 
our  century.” 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


139 


which  is  reflected  at  the  bottom  of  thy 
thoughts.”  “What  is  knowledge  but  a rec- 
ognition?” Therefore,  “forgetting  for  ever 
that  which  was  the  illusion  of  thyself,”  hasten 
to  become  “an  intelligence  freed  from  the 
bonds  and  the  desires  of  the  present  moment.” 
“Become  the  flower  of  thyself1?  Thou  art 
but  what  thou  thinkest:  therefore  think  thy- 
self eternal.”  “Man,  if  thou  cease  to  limit 
in  thyself  a thing,  that  is,  to  desire  it,  if,  so 
doing,  thou  withdraw  thyself  from  it,  it  will 
follow  thee,  woman-like,  as  the  water  fills 
the  place  that  is  offered  to  it  in  the 
hollow  of  the  hand.  For  thou  possessest 
the  real  being  of  all  things,  in  thy  pure 
will,  and  thou  art  the  God  that  thou  art 
able  to  become.” 

To  have  accepted  the  doctrine  which  thus 
finds  expression  in  Axel,  is  to  have  accepted 
this  among  others  of  its  consequences: 
“Science  states,  but  does  not  explain:  she 
is  the  oldest  offspring  of  the  chimeras;  all 
the  chimeras,  then,  on  the  same  terms  as 
the  world  (the  oldest  of  them!),  are  some- 
thing more  than  nothing!”  And  in  Elen 
there  is  a fragment  of  conversation  between 


140  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


two  young  students,  which  has  its  signifi- 
cance also : 

“Goetze.  There’s  my  philosopher  in  full  flight 
to  the  regions  of  the  sublime!  Happily 
we  have  Science,  which  is  a torch,  dear 
mystic;  we  will  analyse  your  sun,  if  the 
planet  does  not  burst  into  pieces  sooner 
than  it  has  any  right  to! 

Samuel.  Science  will  not  suffice.  Sooner  or 
later  you  will  end  by  coming  to  your 
knees. 

Goetze.  Before  what? 

Samuel.  Before  the  darkness!” 

Such  avowals  of  ignorance  are  possible  only 
from  the  height  of  a great  intellectual  pride. 
Villiers’  revolt  against  Science,  so  far  as 
Science  is  materialistic,  and  his  passionate 
curiosity  in  that  chimera’s  flight  towards  the 
invisible,  are  one  and  the  same  impulse  of 
a mind  to  which  only  mind  is  interesting. 
Toute  cette  vieille  Ext&riorite,  maligne,  com- 
pliquee,  inflexible,  that  illusion  which  Science 
accepts  for  the  one  reality:  it  must  be  the 
whole  effort  of  one’s  consciousness  to  escape 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


141 


from  its  entanglements,  to  dominate  it,  or  to 
ignore  it,  and  one’s  art  must  be  the  building 
of  an  ideal  world  beyond  its  access,  from 
which  one  may  indeed  sally  out,  now  and 
again,  in  a desperate  enough  attack  upon 
the  illusions  in  the  midst  of  which  men  live. 

And  just  that,  we  find,  makes  up  the  work 
of  Villiers,  work  which  divides  itself  roughly 
into  two  divisions:  one,  the  ideal  world,  or 
the  ideal  in  the  world  (Axel,  Elen,  Morgane, 
Isis,  some  of  the  contes,  and,  intermediary, 
La  Revolte);  the  other,  satire,  the  mockery 
of  reality  ( L’Eve  Future,  the  Contes  Cruels, 
Tribulat  Bonhomet).  It  is  part  of  the  origi- 
nality of  Villiers  that  the  two  divisions  con- 
stantly flow  into  one  another;  the  idealist 
being  never  more  the  idealist  than  in  his 
buffooneries. 


2 

Axel  is  the  Symbolist  drama,  in  all  its 
uncompromising  conflict  with  the  “modesty” 
of  Nature  and  the  limitations  of  the  stage. 
It  is  the  drama  of  the  soul,  and  at  the  same 
time  it  is  the  most  pictorial  of  dramas;  I 


142  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


should  define  its  manner  as  a kind  of  spiritual 
romanticism.  The  earlier  dramas,  Elen,  Mor- 
gane,  are  fixed  at  somewhat  the  same  point 
in  space;  La  Revolte,  which  seems  to  antici- 
pate The  Doll’s  House,  shows  us  an  artiso- 
cratic  Ibsen,  touching  reality  with  a certain 
disdain,  certainly  with  far  less  skill,  certainly 
with  far  more  beauty.  But  Axel,  meditated 
over  during  a lifetime,  shows  us  Villiers’ 
ideal  of  his  own  idealism. 

The  action  takes  place,  it  is  true,  in  this 
century,  but  it  takes  place  in  corners  of  the 
world  into  which  the  modern  spirit  has  not 
yet  passed;  this  Monastere  de  Religieuses- 
trinitaires,  le  cloitre  de  Sainte  Appolodora, 
situe  sur  les  confins  du  littoral  de  Vancienne 
Flandre  frangaise,  and  the  tres  vieux  chateau 
fort,  le  hurg  des  margraves  d’Auersperg,  isole  au 
milieu  du  Schwartzwald.  The  characters,  Axel 
d’Auersperg,  Eve  Sara  Emmanuele  de  Maupers, 
Maitre  Janus,  the  Archidiacre,  the  Comman- 
deur  Kaspar  d’Auersperg,  are  at  once  more 
and  less  than  human  beings:  they  are  the 
types  of  different  ideals,  and  they  are  clothed 
with  just  enough  humanity  to  give  form  to 
what  would  otherwise  remain  disembodied 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


143 


spirit.  The  religious  ideal,  the  occult  ideal, 
the  worldly  ideal,  the  passionate  ideal,  are  all 
presented,  one  after  the  other,  in  these  daz- 
zling and  profound  pages;  Axel  is  the  dis- 
dainful choice  from  among  them,  the  dis- 
dainful rejection  of  life  itself,  of  the  whole 
illusion  of  life,  “ since  infinity  alone  is  not  a 
deception.”  And  Sara?  Sara  is  a superb  part 
of  that  life  which  is  rejected,  which  she  herself 
comes,  not  without  reluctance,  to  reject.  In 
that  motionless  figure,  during  the  whole  of  the 
first  act  silent  but  for  a single  “No,”  and  leap- 
ing into  a moment’s  violent  action  as  the  act 
closes,  she  is  the  haughtiest  woman  in  litera- 
ture. But  she  is  a woman,  and  she  desires  life, 
finding  it  in  Axel.  Pride,  and  the  woman’s 
devotion  to  the  man,  aid  her  to  take  the  last 
cold  step  with  Axel,  in  the  transcendental 
giving  up  of  life  at  the  moment  when  life  be- 
comes ideal. 

And  the  play  is  written,  throughout,  with 
a curious  solemnity,  a particular  kind  of 
eloquence,  which  makes  no  attempt  to  imitate 
the  level  of  the  speech  of  every  day,  but  which 
is  a sort  of  ideal  language  in  which  beauty  is 
aimed  at  as  exclusively  as  if  it  were  written  in 


144  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


verse.  The  modern  drama,  under  the  demo- 
cratic influence  of  Ibsen,  the  positive  influence 
of  Dumas  fils,  has  limited  itself  to  the  expres- 
sion of  temperaments  in  the  one  case,  of  theo- 
retic intelligences  in  the  other,  in  as  nearly 
as  possible  the  words  which  the  average  man 
would  use  for  the  statement  of  his  emotions 
and  ideas.  The  form,  that  is,  is  degraded 
below  the  level  of  the  characters  whom  it  at- 
tempts to  express;  for  it  is  evident  that  the 
average  man  can  articulate  only  a small  enough 
part  of  what  he  obscurely  feels  or  thinks;  and 
the  theory  of  Realism  is  that  his  emotions  and 
ideas  are  to  be  given  only  in  so  far  as  the  words 
at  his  own  command  can  give  them.  Villiers, 
choosing  to  concern  himself  only  with  excep- 
tional characters,  and  with  them  only  in  the 
absolute,  invents  for  them  a more  elaborate 
and  a more  magnificent  speech  than  they 
would  naturally  employ,  the  speech  of  their 
thoughts,  of  their  dreams. 

And  it  is  a world  thought  or  dreamt  in 
some  more  fortunate  atmosphere  than  that 
in  which  we  live,  that  Villiers  has  created  for 
the  final  achievement  of  his  abstract  ideas. 
I do  not  doubt  that  he  himself  always  lived 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


145 


in  it,  through  all  the  poverty  of  the  precipitous 
Rue  des  Martyrs.  But  it  is  in  Axel,  and 
in  Axel  only,  that  he  has  made  us  also  inhab- 
itants of  that  world.  Even  in  Elen  we  are 
spectators,  watching  a tragical  fairy  play  (as 
if  Fantasio  became  suddenly  in  deadly  earnest), 
watching  some  one  else’s  dreams.  Axel  en- 
velops us  in  its  own  atmosphere;  it  is  as  if  we 
found  ourselves  on  a mountain  top  on  the 
other  side  of  the  clouds,  and  without  surprise 
at  finding  ourselves  there. 

The  ideal,  to  Villiers,  being  the  real,  spiritual 
beauty  being  the  essential  beauty,  and  mate- 
rial beauty  its  reflection,  or  its  revelation,  it  is 
with  a sort  of  fury  that  he  attacks  the  material- 
ising forces  of  the  world:  science,  progress, 
the  worldly  emphasis  on  “facts,”  on  what  is 
“positive,”  “serious,”  “respectable.”  Satire, 
with  him,  is  the  revenge  of  beauty  upon  ugli- 
ness, the  persecution  of  the  ugly;  it  is  not 
merely  social  satire,  it  is  a satire  on  the  mate- 
rial universe  by  one  who  believes  in  a spiritual 
universe.  Thus  it  is  the  only  laughter  of  our 
time  which  is  fundamental,  as  fundamental  as 
that  of  Swift  or  Rabelais.  And  this  lacerating 
laughter  of  the  idealist  is  never  surer  in  its  aim 


146  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


than  when  it  turns  the  arms  of  science  against 
itself,  as  in  the  vast  buffoonery  of  L’Eve  Future. 
A Parisian  wit,  sharpened  to  a fineness  of  irony 
such  as  only  wit  which  is  also  philosophy 
can  attain,  brings  in  another  method  of  attack; 
humour,  which  is  almost  English,  another; 
while  again  satire  becomes  tragic,  fantastic, 
macabre.  In  those  enigmatic  “tales  of  the 
grotesque  and  arabesque,”  in  which  Villiers 
rivals  Poe  on  his  own  ground,  there  is,  for  the 
most  part,  a multiplicity  of  meaning  which  is, 
as  it  is  meant  to  be,  disconcerting.  I should 
not  like  to  say  how  far  Villiers  does  not,  some- 
times, believe  in  his  own  magic. 

It  is  characteristic  of  him,  at  all  events, 
that  he  employs  what  we  call  the  supernatural 
alike  in  his  works  of  pare  idealism  and  in 
his  works  of  sheer  satire.  The  moment  the 
world  ceased  to  be  the  stable  object,  solidly 
encrusted  with  houses  in  brick  and  stone, 
which  it  is  to  most  of  its  so  temporary  in- 
habitants, Villiers  was  at  home.  When  he 
sought  the  absolute  beauty,  it  was  beyond 
the  world  that  he  found  it;  when  he  sought 
horror,  it  was  a breath  blowing  from  an 
invisible  darkness  which  brought  it  to  his 


VTLLIERS  DE  L’ ISLE-AD  AM 


147 


nerves;  when  he  desired  to  mock  the  pre- 
tensions of  knowledge  of  or  ignorance,  it 
was  always  with  the  unseen  that  his  tragic 
buffoonery  made  familiar. 

There  is,  in  everything  which  Villiers  wrote, 
a strangeness,  certainly  both  instinctive  and 
deliberate,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  the  natural 
consequence  of  that  intellectual  pride  which, 
as  I have  pointed  out,  was  at  the  basis  of  his 
character.  He  hated  every  kind  of  medi- 
ocrity: therefore  he  chose  to  analyse  excep- 
tional souls,  to  construct  exceptional  stories, 
to  invent  splendid  names,  and  to  evoke  singu- 
lar landscapes.  It  was  part  of  his  curiosity 
in  souls  to  prefer  the  complex  to  the  simple, 
the  perverse  to  the  straightforward,  the  am- 
biguous to  either.  His  heroes  are  incar- 
nations of  spiritual  pride,  and  their  tragedies 
are  the  shock  of  spirit  against  matter,  the 
invasion  of  spirit  by  matter,  the  temptation 
of  spirit  by  spiritual  evil.  They  seek  the 
absolute,  and  find  death;  they  seek  wisdom, 
find  love,  and  fall  into  spiritual  decay;  they 
seek  reality,  and  find  crime;  they  seek  phan- 
toms, and  find  themselves.  They  are  on 
the  borders  of  a wisdom  too  great  for  their 


148  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


capacity;  they  are  haunted  by  dark  powers, 
instincts  of  ambiguous  passions;  they  are  too 
lucid  to  be  quite  sane  in  their  extravagances; 
they  have  not  quite  systematically  transposed 
their  dreams  into  action.  And  his  heroines, 
when  they  are  not,  like  L’Eve  Future,  the 
vitalised  mechanism  of  an  Edison,  have  the 
solemnity  of  dead  people,  and  a hieratic 
speech.  Songe,  des  cceurs  condamnes  a ce 
supplice,  de  ne  pas  m’aimer!  says  Sara,  in 
Axel.  Je  ne  Vaime  pas,  ce  jeune  homme. 
Qu’ai-je  done  fait  d Dieu?  says  Elen.  And 
their  voice  is  always  like  the  voice  of  Elen: 
“I  listened  attentively  to  the  sound  of  her 
voice;  it  was  tactiturn,  subdued,  like  the 
murmur  of  the  river  Lethe,  flowing  through 
the  region  of  shadows.”  They  have  the  im- 
mortal weariness  of  beauty,  they  are  enigmas 
to  themselves,  they  desire,  and  know  not 
why  they  refrain,  they  do  good  and  evil  with 
the  lifting  of  an  eyelid,  and  are  innocent 
and  guilty  of  all  the  sins  of  the  earth. 

And  these  strange  inhabitants  move  in 
as  strange  a world.  They  are  the  princes 
and  chatelaines  of  ancient  castles  lost  in 
the  depths  of  the  Black  Forest;  they  are 


VILLIERS  DE  LTSLE-ADAM 


149 


the  last  descendants  of  a great  race  about 
to  come  to  an  end;  students  of  magic,  who 
have  the  sharp  and  swift  swords  of  the  sol- 
dier; enigmatic  courtesans,  at  the  table  of 
strange  feasts;  they  find  incalculable  treas- 
ures, tonnantes  et  sonnantes  cataractes  d’or 
liquide,  only  to  disdain  them.  All  the  pomp 
of  the  world  approaches  them,  that  they  may 
the  better  abnegate  it,  or  that  it  may  ruin 
them  to  a deeper  degree  of  their  material 
hell.  And  we  see  them  always  at  the  moment 
of  a crisis,  before  the  two  ways  of  a decision, 
hesitating  in  the  entanglements  of  a great 
temptation.  And  this  casuist  of  souls  will 
drag  forth  some  horribly  stunted  or  horribly 
overgrown  soul  from  under  its  obscure  cov- 
ering, setting  it  to  dance  naked  before  our 
eyes.  He  has  no  mercy  on  those  who  have 
no  mercy  on  themselves. 

In  the  sense  in  which  that  word  is  ordi- 
narily used,  Villiers  has  no  pathos.  This  is 
enough  to  explain  why  he  can  never,  in  the 
phrase  he  would  have  disliked  so  greatly, 
“touch  the  popular  heart.”  His  mind  is  too 
abstract  to  contain  pity,  and  it  is  in  his  lack 
of  pity  that  he  seems  to  put  himself  outside 


150  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


humanity.  A chacun  son  infini,  he  has  said, 
and  in  the  avidity  of  his  search  for  the  infinite 
he  has  no  mercy  for  the  blind  weakness  which 
goes  stumbling  over  the  earth,  without  so 
much  as  knowing  that  the  sun  and  stars  are 
overhead.  He  sees  only  the  gross  multitude, 
the  multitude  which  has  the  contentment  of 
the  slave.  He  cannot  pardon  stupidity,  for 
it  is  incomprehensible  to  him.  He  sees, 
rightly,  that  stupidity  is  more  criminal  than 
vice;  if  only  because  vice  is  curable,  stupidity 
incurable.  But  he  does  not  realise,  as  the 
great  novelists  have  realised,  that  stupidity 
can  be  pathetic,  and  that  there  is  not  a 
peasant,  nor  even  a self-satisfied  bourgeois, 
in  whom  the  soul  has  not  its  part,  in  whose 
existence  it  is  not  possible  to  be  interested. 

Contempt,  noble  as  it  may  be,  anger, 
righteous  though  it  may  be,  cannot  be  in- 
dulged in  without  a certain  lack  of  sympathy; 
and  lack  of  sympathy  comes  from  a lack  of 
patient  understanding.  It  is  certain  that  the 
destiny  of  the  greater  part  of  the  human  race 
is  either  infinitely  pathetic  or  infinitely  ridic- 
ulous. Under  which  aspect,  then,  shall  that 
destiny,  and  those  obscure  fractions  of  human- 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


151 


ity,  be  considered?  Villiers  was  too  sincere 
an  idealist,  too  absolute  in  his  idealism, 
to  hesitate.  “As  for  living,”  he  cries,  in 
that  splendid  phrase  of  Axel,  “our  servants 
will  do  that  for  us!”  And,  in  the  Contes 
Cruets,  there  is  this  not  less  characteristic 
expression  of  what  was  always  his  mental 
attitude:  “As  at  the  play,  in  a central  stall, 
one  sits  out,  so  as  not  to  disturb  one’s  neigh- 
bours— out  of  courtesy,  in  a word — some  play 
written  in  a wearisome  style  and  of  which 
one  does  not  like  the  subject,  so  I lived,  out 
of  politeness”:  je  vivais  par  politesse.  In 
this  haughtiness  towards  life,  in  this  disdain 
of  ordinary  human  motives  and  ordinary 
human  beings,  there  is  at  once  the  distinction 
and  the  weakness  of  Villiers.  And  he  has 
himself  pointed  the  moral  against  himself 
in  these  words  of  the  story  which  forms  the 
epilogue  to  the  Contes  Cruets:  “When  the 
forehead  alone  contains  the  existence  of  a 
man,  that  man  is  enlightened  only  from 
above  his  head;  then  his  jealous  shadow, 
prostrate  under  him,  draws  him  by  the  feet, 
that  it  may  drag  him  down  into  the  invisible.” 


152  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


3 

All  his  life  Villiers  was  a poor  man;  though, 
all  his  life,  he  was  awaiting  that  fortune 
which  he  refused  to  anticipate  by  any  mean 
employment.  During  most  of  his  life,  he 
was  practically  an  unknown  man.  Greatly 
loved,  ardently  admired,  by  that  inner  circle 
of  the  men  who  have  made  modern  French 
literature,  from  Verlaine  to  Maeterlinck,  he 
was  looked  upon  by  most  people  as  an  amus- 
ing kind  of  madman,  a little  dangerous, 
whose  ideas,  as  they  floated  freely  over  the 
cafe-table,  it  was  at  times  highly  profitable  to 
steal.  For  Villiers  talked  his  works  before 
writing  them,  and  sometimes  he  talked  them 
instead  of  writing  them,  in  his  too  royally 
spendthrift  way.  To  those  who  knew  him 
he  seemed  genius  itself,  and  would  have 
seemed  so  if  he  had  never  written  a line; 
for  he  had  the  dangerous  gift  of  a person- 
ality which  seems  to  have  already  achieved 
all  that  it  so  energetically  contemplates. 
But  personality  tells  only  within  hands’ 
reach ; and  Villiers  failed  even  to  startle, 
failed  even  to  exasperate,  the  general  reader. 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


153 


That  his  Premieres  Poesies,  published  at 
the  age  of  nineteen,  should  have  brought  him 
fame  was  hardly  to  be  expected,  remark- 
able, especially  in  its  ideas,  as  that  book  is. 
Nor  was  it  to  be  expected  of  the  enigmatic 
fragment  of  a romance,  Isis  (1862),  antici- 
pating, as  it  does,  by  so  long  a period,  the 
esoteric  and  spiritualistic  romances  which  were 
to  have  their  vogue.  But  Elen  (1864)  and 
Morgane  (1865),  those  two  poetic  dramas  in 
prose,  so  full  of  distinction,  of  spiritual  rarity; 
but  two  years  later,  Claire  Lenoir  (afterwards 
incorporated  in  one  of  his  really  great  books, 
Tribulat  Bonhomet ),  with  its  macabre  horror; 
but  La  Revolte  (1870),  for  Villiers  so  “actual,” 
and  which  had  its  moments  of  success  when 
it  was  revived  in  1896  at  the  Od6on;  but  Le 
Nouveau  Monde  (1880),  a drama  which,  by 
some  extraordinary  caprice,  won  a prize; 
but  Les  Contes  Cruels  (1880),  that  collection 
of  masterpieces,  in  which  the  essentially 
French  conte  is  outdone  on  its  own  ground! 
It  was  not  till  1886  that  Villiers  ceased  to  be 
an  unknown  writer,  with  the  publication  of 
that  phosphorescent  buffoonery  of  science, 
that  vast  parody  of  humanity,  L’Eve  Future. 


154  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Tribulat  Bonhomet  (which  he  himself  defined 
as  bouffonnerie  enorme  et  sombre,  couleur  du 
siecle ) was  to  come,  in  its  final  form,  and 
the  superb  poem  in  prose  Akedysseril;  and 
then,  more  and  more  indifferent  collections 
of  stories,  in  which  Villiers,  already  dying,  is 
but  the  shadow  of  himself:  L’ Amour  Supreme 
(1886),  Histoires  Insolites  (1888),  Nouveaux 
Contes  Cruels  (1888).  He  was  correcting  the 
proofs  of  Axel  when  he  died;  the  volume  was 
published  in  1890,  followed  by  Propos  d’au- 
dela,  and  a series  of  articles,  Chez  les  Passants. 
Once  dead,  the  fame  which  had  avoided  him 
all  his  life  began  to  follow  him;  he  had  une 
belle  presse  at  his  funeral. 

Meanwhile,  he  had  been  preparing  the  spir- 
itual atmosphere  of  the  new  generation.  Living 
among  believers  in  the  material  world,  he 
had  been  declaring,  not  in  vain,  his  belief  in 
the  world  of  the  spirit;  living  among  Realists 
and  Parnassians,  he  had  been  creating  a 
new  form  of  art,  the  art  of  the  Symbolist 
drama,  and  of  Symbolism  in  fiction.  He  had 
been  lonely  all  his  life,  for  he  had  been  living 
in  his  own  lifetime,  the  life  of  the  next  genera- 
tion. There  was  but  one  man  among  his  con- 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 


155 


temporaries  to  whom  he  could  give,  and  from 
whom  he  could  receive,  perfect  sympathy. 
That  man  was  Wagner.  Gradually  the  younger 
men  came  about  him;  at  the  end  he  was  not 
lacking  in  disciples. 

And  after  all,  the  last  word  of  Villiers  is 
faith;  faith  against  the  evidence  of  the  senses, 
against  the  negations  of  materialistic  science, 
against  the  monstrous  paradox  of  progress, 
against  his  own  pessimism  in  the  face  of  these 
formidable  enemies.  He  affirms;  he  “ believes 
in  soul,  is  very  sure  of  God”;  requires  no  wit- 
ness to  the  spiritual  world  of  which  he  is 
always  the  inhabitant;  and  is  content  to  lose 
his  way  in  the  material  world,  brushing  off  its 
mud  from  time  to  time  with  a disdainful  ges- 
ture, as  he  goes  on  his  way  (to  apply  a signifi- 
cant word  of  Pater)  “like  one  on  a secret 
errand.” 


LEON  CLADEL 


I hope  that  the  life  of  Leon  Cladel  by  his 
daughter  Judith,  which  Lemerre  has  brought 
out  in  a pleasant  volume,  will  do  something 
for  the  fame  of  one  of  the  most  original  writers 
of  our  time.  Cladel  had  the  good  fortune  to 
be  recognised  in  his  lifetime  by  those  whose 
approval  mattered  most,  beginning  with  Bau- 
delaire, who  discovered  him  before  he  had 
printed  his  first  book,  and  helped  to  teach  him 
the  craft  of  letters.  But  so  exceptional  an 
artist  could  never  be  popular,  though  he  worked 
in  living  stuff  and  put  the  whole  savour  of  his 
countryside  into  his  tragic  and  passionate 
stories.  A peasant,  who  writes  about  peasants 
and  poor  people,  with  a curiosity  of  style  which 
not  only  packs  his  vocabulary  with  difficult 
words,  old  or  local,  and  with  unheard  of 
rhythms,  chosen  to  give  voice  to  some  never 
yet  articulated  emotion,  but  which  drives 
him  into  oddities  of  printing,  of  punctuation, 
of  the  very  shape  of  his  accents!  A page 


LfiON  CLADEL 


157 


of  Cladel  has  a certain  visible  uncouthness, 
and  at  first  this  seems  in  keeping  with  his 
matter;  but  the  uncouthness,  when  you  look 
into  it,  turns  out  to  be  itself  a refinement, 
and  what  has  seemed  a confused  whirl,  an 
improvisation,  to  be  the  result  really  of  reit- 
erated labour,  whose  whole  aim  has  been  to 
bring  the  spontaneity  of  the  first  impulse 
back  into  the  laboriously  finished  work. 

In  this  just,  sensitive,  and  admirable  book, 
written  by  one  who  has  inherited  a not  less 
passionate  curiosity  about  life,  but  with  more 
patience  in  waiting  upon  it,  watching  it,  noting 
its  surprises,  we  have  a simple  and  sufficient 
commentary  upon  the  books  and  upon  the  man. 
The  narrative  has  warmth  and  reserve,  and  is 
at  once  tender  and  clear-sighted.  J’entrevois 
nettement,  she  says  with  truth,  combien  seront 
precieux  pour  les  futurs  historiens  de  la  li- 
terature du  xix]  siecle,  les  memoires  traces  au 
contact  immediat  de  V artiste,  exposes  de  ses  faits 
et  gestes  particuliers,  de  ses  origines,  de  la 
germination  de  ses  croyances  et  de  son  talent; 
ses  critiques  a venir  y trouveront  de  solides  ma- 
teriaux,  ses  admirateurs  un  aliment  d leurpiete 
et  les  philosophes  un  des  aspects  de  V Ame  fran- 


158  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


gaise.  The  man  is  shown  to  us,  les  elans  de 
cette  time  toujours  grondante  et  fulgurante  comme 
une  forge,  et  les  nuances  de  ce  fievreux  visage 
d’apotre,  brun,  fin  et  sinueux,  and  we  see  the 
inevitable  growth,  out  of  the  hard  soil  of 
Quercy  and  out  of  the  fertilising  contact  of 
Paris  and  Baudelaire,  of  this  whole  literature, 
these  books  no  less  astonishing  than  their 
titles:  Ompdrailles-le-Tombeau-des-Lutteurs, 

Celui  de  la  Croix-aux-Bceufs,  La  Fete  Votive 
de  Saint-Bartholomee-Porte-Glaive.  The  very 
titles  are  an  excitement.  I can  remember  how 
mysterious  and  alluring  they  used  to  seem  to 
me  when  I first  saw  them  on  the  cover  of  what 
was  perhaps  his  best  book,  Les  Va-Nu-Pieds. 

It  is  by  one  of  the  stories,  and  the  shortest, 
in  Les  Va-Nu-Pieds,  that  I remember  Cladel. 
I read  it  when  I was  a boy,  and  I cannot  think 
of  it  now  without  a shiver.  It  is  called  L’Her- 
cule,  and  it  is  about  a Sandow  of  the  streets,  a 
professional  strong  man,  who  kills  himself  by 
an  overstrain;  it  is  not  a story  at  all,  it  is  the 
record  of  an  incident,  and  there  is  only  the 
strong  man  in  it  and  his  friend  the  zany, 
who  makes  the  jokes  while  the  strong  man 
juggles  with  bars  and  cannon-balls.  It  is  all 


LfiON  CLADEL 


159 


told  in  a breath,  without  a pause,  as  if  some- 
one who  had  just  seen  it  poured  it  out  in  a 
flood  of  hot  words.  Such  vehemence,  such 
pity,  such  a sense  of  the  cruelty  of  the  spectacle 
of  a man  driven  to  death  like  a beast,  for  a few 
pence  and  the  pleasure  of  a few  children;  such 
an  evocation  of  the  sun  and  the  streets  and  this 
sordid  tragic  thing  happening  to  the  sound  of 
drum  and  cymbals;  such  a vision  in  sunlight 
of  a barbarous  and  ridiculous  and  horrible 
accident,  lifted  by  the  telling  of  it  into  a new 
and  unforgettable  beauty,  I have  never  felt 
or  seen  in  any  other  story  of  a like  grotesque 
tragedy.  It  realises  an  ideal,  it  does  for  once 
what  many  artists  have  tried  and  failed  to  do; 
it  wrings  the  last  drop  of  agony  out  of  that 
subject  which  it  is  so  easy  to  make  pathetic 
and  effective.  Dickens  could  not  have  done 
it,  Bret  Harte  could  not  have  done  it,  Kipling 
could  not  do  it:  Cladel  did  it  only  once,  with 
this  perfection. 

Something  like  it  he  did  over  and  over  again, 
with  unflagging  vehemence,  with  splendid  vari- 
ations, in  stories  of  peasants  and  wrestlers  and 
thieves  and  prostitutes.  They  are  all,  as  his 
daughter  says,  epic;  she  calls  them  Homeric, 


160  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


but  there  is  none  of  the  Homeric  simplicity  in 
this  tumult  of  coloured  and  clotted  speech,  in 
which  the  language  is  tortured  to  make  it 
speak.  The  comparison  with  Rabelais  is  nearer. 
La  recherche  du  terme  vivant,  sa  raise  en  valeur 
et  en  saveur,  la  surabondance  des  vocables  puises 
a toutes  sources  ...  la  condensation  de  V action 
autour  de  ces  quelques  motifs  eternels  de  V epopee: 
combat , ripaille,  palabre  et  luxure,  there,  as 
she  sees  justly,  are  links  with  Rabelais.  Gon- 
court,  himself  always  aiming  at  an  impossible 
closeness  of  written  to  spoken  speech,  noted 
with  admiration  la  vraie  photographie  de  la 
parole  avec  ses  tours,  ses  abbreviations  ses  ellipses, 
son  essoufflement  presque.  Speech  out  of  breath, 
that  is  what  Cladel’s  is  always;  his  words, 
never  the  likely  ones,  do  not  so  much  speak  as 
cry,  gesticulate,  overtake  one  another.  L'ame 
de  Leon  Cladel,  says  his  daughter,  etait  dans  un 
constant  et  flamboyant  automne.  Something  of 
the  colour  and  fever  of  autumn  is  in  all  he 
wrote.  Another  writer  since  Cladel,  who  has 
probably  never  heard  of  him,  has  made  heroes 
of  peasants  and  vagabonds.  But  Maxim  Gorki 
makes  heroes  of  them,  consciously,  with  a 
mental  self-assertion,  giving  them  ideas  which 


LEON  CLADEL 


161 


he  has  found  in  Nietzsche.  Cladel  put  into 
all  his  people  some  of  his  own  passionate  way 
of  seeing  “ scarlet,”  to  use  Barbey  d’Aurevilly’s 
epithet:  un  rural  ecarlate.  Vehement  and 
voluminous,  he  overflowed:  his  whole  aim  as 
an  artist,  as  a pupil  of  Baudelaire,  was  to  con- 
centrate, to  hold  himself  back;  and  the  effort 
added  impetus  to  the  checked  overflow.  To 
the  realists  he  seemed  merely  extravagant;  he 
saw  certainly  what  they  could  not  see;  and 
his  romance  was  always  a fruit  of  the  soil. 
The  artist  in  him,  seeming  to  be  in  conflict 
with  the  peasant,  fortified,  clarified  the  peasant, 
extracted  from  that  hard  soil  a rare  fruit. 
You  see  in  his  face  an  extraordinary  mingling 
of  the  peasant,  the  visionary,  and  the  dandy: 
the  long  hair  and  beard,  the  sensitive  mouth 
and  nose,  the  fierce  brooding  eyes,  in  which 
wildness  and  delicacy,  strength  and  a kind  of 
stealthiness,  seem  to  be  grafted  on  an  inflexible 
peasant  stock. 

1906. 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD 


The  art  of  Zola  is  based  on  certain  theories, 
on  a view  of  humanity  which  he  has  adopted 
as  his  formula.  As  a deduction  from  his 
formula,  he  takes  many  things  in  human 
nature  for  granted,  he  is  content  to  observe  at 
second-hand;  and  it  is  only  when  he  comes 
to  the  filling-up  of  his  outlines,  the  mise-en- 
scene,  that  his  observation  becomes  personal, 
minute,  and  persistent.  He  has  thus  suc- 
ceeded in  being  at  once  unreal  where  reality  is 
most  essential,  and  tediously  real  where  a 
point-by-point  reality  is  sometimes  unimpor- 
tant. The  contradiction  is  an  ingenious  one, 
wrhich  it  may  be  interesting  to  examine  in  a 
little  detail,  and  from  several  points  of  view. 

And,  first  of  all,  take  L’ Assommoir,  no 
doubt  the  most  characteristic  of  Zola’s  novels, 
and  probably  the  best;  and,  leaving  out  for 
the  present  the  broader  question  of  his  general 
conception  of  humanity,  let  us  look  at  Zola’s 
manner  of  dealing  with  his  material,  noting 

162 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  163 


by  the  way  certain  differences  between  his 
manner  and  that  of  Goncourt,  of  Flaubert, 
with  both  of  whom  he  has  so  often  been  com- 
pared, and  with  whom  he  wishes  to  challenge 
comparison.  Contrast  VAssommoir  with 
Germinie  Lacerteux,  which,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, was  written  thirteen  years  earlier. 
Goncourt,  as  he  incessantly  reminds  us,  was 
the  first  novelist  in  France  to  deliberately 
study  the  life  of  the  people,  after  precise  doc- 
uments; and  Germinie  Lacerteux  has  this  dis- 
tinction, among  others,  that  it  was  a new 
thing.  And  it  is  done  with  admirable  skill; 
as  a piece  of  writing,  as  a work  of  art,  it  is  far 
superior  to  Zola.  But,  certainly,  Zola’s  work 
has  a mass  and  bulk,  a fougue,  a portee,  which 
Goncourt ’s  lacks;  and  it  has  a savour  of  ple- 
beian flesh  which  all  the  delicate  art  of  Gon- 
court could  not  evoke.  Zola  sickens  you  with 
it;  but  there  it  is.  As  in  all  his  books,  but 
more  than  in  most,  there  is  something  greasy, 
a smear  of  eating  and  drinking;  the  pages,  to 
use  his  own  phrase,  grasses  des  lichades  du 
lundi.  In  Germinie  Lacerteux  you  never  for- 
get that  Goncourt  is  an  aristocrat;  in 
L’Assommoir  you  never  forget  that  Zola 


164  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


is  a bourgeois.  Whatever  Goncourt  touches 
becomes,  by  the  mere  magic  of  his  touch, 
charming,  a picture;  Zola  is  totally  destitute 
of  charm.  But  how,  in  L’Assommoir,  he 
drives  home  to  you  the  horrid  realities  of  these 
narrow,  uncomfortable  lives!  Zola  has  made 
up  his  mind  that  he  will  say  everything,  with- 
out omitting  a single  item,  whatever  he  has  to 
say;  thus,  in  L’Assommoir,  there  is  a great 
feast  which  lasts  for  fifty  pages,  beginning  with 
the  picking  of  the  goose,  the  day  before,  and 
going  on  to  the  picking  of  the  goose’s  bones, 
by  a stray  marauding  cat,  the  night  after. 
And,  in  a sense,  he  does  say  everything;  and 
there,  certainly,  is  his  novelty,  his  invention. 
He  observes  with  immense  persistence,  but  his 
observation,  after  all,  is  only  that  of  the  man 
in  the  street;  it  is  simply  carried  into  detail, 
deliberately.  And,  while  Goncourt  wanders 
away  sometimes  into  arabesques,  indulges  in 
flourishes,  so  finely  artistic  is  his  sense  of 
words  and  of  the  things  they  represent,  so 
perfectly  can  he  match  a sensation  or  an  im- 
pression by  its  figure  in  speech,  Zola,  on  the 
contrary,  never  finds  just  the  right  word,  and 
it  is  his  persistent  fumbling  for  it  which  pro- 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  165 


duces  these  miles  of  description;  four  pages 
describing  how  two  people  went  upstairs,  from 
the  ground  floor  to  the  sixth  story,  and  then 
two  pages  afterwards  to  describe  how  they 
came  downstairs  again.  Sometimes,  by  his 
prodigious  diligence  and  minuteness,  he  suc- 
ceeds in  giving  you  the  impression;  often, 
indeed;  but  at  the  cost  of  what  ennui  to  writer 
and  reader  alike!  And  so  much  of  it  all  is 
purely  unnecessary,  has  no  interest  in  itself 
and  no  connection  with  the  story:  the  precise 
details  of  Lorilleux’s  chain-making,  bristling 
with  technical  terms : it  was  la  colonne  that  he 
made,  and  only  that  particular  kind  of  chain; 
Gou jet’s  forge,  and  the  machinery  in  the  shed 
next  door;  and  just  how  you  cut  out  zinc  with 
a large  pair  of  scissors.  When  Goncourt  gives 
you  a long  description  of  anything,  even  if  you 
do  not  feel  that  it  helps  on  the  story  very  much, 
it  is  such  a beautiful  thing  in  itself,  his  mere  way 
of  writing  it  is  so  enchanting,  that  you  find 
yourself  wishing  it  longer,  at  its  longest.  But 
with  Zola,  there  is  no  literary  interest  in  the 
writing,  apart  from  its  clear  and  coherent 
expression  of  a given  thing;  and  these  inter- 
minable descriptions  have  no  extraneous,  or, 


166  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


if  you  will,  implicit  interest,  to  save  them  from 
the  charge  of  irrelevancy;  they  sink  by  their 
own  weight.  Just  as  Zola’s  vision  is  the  vision 
of  the  average  man,  so  his  vocabulary,  with 
all  its  technicology,  remains  mediocre,  incapa- 
ble of  expressing  subtleties,  incapable  of  a 
really  artistic  effect.  To  find  out  in  a slang 
dictionary  that  a filthy  idea  can  be  expressed 
by  an  ingeniously  filthy  phrase  in  argot,  and  to 
use  that  phrase,  is  not  a great  feat,  or,  on 
purely  artistic  grounds,  altogether  desirable. 
To  go  to  a chainmaker  and  learn  the  trade 
name  of  the  various  kinds  of  chain  which  he 
manufactures,  and  of  the  instruments  with 
which  he  manufactures  them,  is  not  an  elab- 
orate process,  or  one  which  can  be  said  to  pay 
you  for  the  little  trouble  which  it  no  doubt 
takes.  And  it  is  not  w^ell  to  be  too  certain 
after  all  that  Zola  is  always  perfectly  accurate 
in  his  use  of  all  this  manifold  knowledge.  The 
slang,  for  example;  he  went  to  books  for  it,  in 
books  he  found  it,  and  no  one  will  ever  find 
some  of  it  but  in  books.  However,  my 
main  contention  is  that  Zola’s  general  use  of 
words  is,  to  be  quite  frank,  somewhat  inef- 
fectual. He  tries  to  do  what  Flaubert  did, 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  167 


without  Flaubert’s  tools,  and  without  the 
craftsman’s  hand  at  the  back  of  the  tools. 
His  fingers  are  too  thick;  they  leave  a blurred 
line.  If  you  want  merely  weight,  a certain 
kind  of  force,  you  get  it ; but  no  more. 

Where  a large  part  of  Zola’s  merit  lies,  in 
his  persistent  attention  to  detail,  one  finds 
also  one  of  his  chief  defects.  He  cannot  leave 
well  alone;  he  cannot  omit;  he  will  not  take 
the  most  obvious  fact  for  granted.  II  marcha 
le  'premier,  elle  le  suivit,  well,  of  course,  she 
followed  him,  if  he  walked  first:  why  men- 
tion the  fact?  That  beginning  of  a sentence  is 
absolutely  typical;  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
refer,  for  the  twentieth  time,  to  some  unim- 
portant character,  without  giving  name  and 
profession,  not  one  or  the  other,  but  both,  in- 
variably both.  He  tells  us  particularly  that  a 
room  is  composed  of  four  walls,  that  a table 
stands  on  its  four  legs.  And  he  does  not  appear 
to  see  the  difference  between  doing  that  and 
doing  as  Flaubert  does,  namely,  selecting  pre- 
cisely the  detail  out  of  all  others  which  renders 
or  consorts  with  the  scene  in  hand,  and  giving 
that  detail  wdth  an  ingenious  exactness.  Here, 
for  instance,  in  Madame  Bovary,  is  a charac- 


168  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


teristic  detail  in  the  manner  of  Flaubert: 
Huit  jours  apres,  comme  elle  etendait  du  linge 
dans  sa  cour,  elle  fut  prise  d'un  crachement 
de  sang,  et  le  lendemain,  tandis  que  Charles 
avail  le  dos  tourne  pour  fermer  le  rideau  de  la 
fenetre,  elle  dit:  “Ah!  mon  Dieu!”  poussa  un 
soupir  et  s’evanouit.  Elle  etait  morte.  Now 
that  detail,  brought  in  without  the  slight- 
est emphasis,  of  the  husband  turning  his 
back  at  the  very  instant  that  his  wife  dies,  is 
a detail  of  immense  psychological  value;  it 
indicates  to  us,  at  the  very  opening  of  the  book, 
just  the  character  of  the  man  about  whom  we 
are  to  read  so  much.  Zola  would  have  taken 
at  least  two  pages  to  say  that,  and,  after  all, 
he  would  not  have  said  it.  He  would  have  told 
you  the  position  of  the  chest  of  drawers  in  the 
room,  what  wood  the  chest  of  drawers  was 
made  of,  and  if  it  had  a little  varnish  knocked 
off  at  the  corner  of  the  lower  cornice,  just 
where  it  would  naturally  be  in  the  way  of 
people’s  feet  as  they  entered  the  door.  He 
would  have  told  you  how  Charles  leant  against 
the  other  corner  of  the  chest  of  drawers,  and 
that  the  edge  of  the  upper  cornice  left  a slight 
dent  in  his  black  frock-coat,  which  remained 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD 


169 


visible  half  an  hour  afterwards.  But  that  one 
little  detail,  which  Flaubert  selects  from  among 
a thousand,  that,  no,  he  would  never  have 
given  us  that ! 

And  the  language  in  which  all  this  is  written, 
apart  from  the  consideration  of  language  as  a 
medium,  is  really  not  literature  at  all,  in  any 
strict  sense.  I am  not,  for  the  moment,  com- 
plaining of  the  colloquialism  and  the  slang. 
Zola  has  told  us  that  he  has,  in  L’Assommoir, 
used  the  language  of  the  people  in  order  to 
render  the  people  with  a closer  truth.  Whether 
he  has  done  that  or  not  is  not  the  question. 
The  question  is,  that  he  does  not  give  one  the 
sense  of  reading  good  literature,  whether  he 
speaks  in  Delvau’s  langue  verte,  or  according 
to  the  Academy’s  latest  edition  of  classical 
French.  His  sentences  have  no  rhythm;  they 
give  no  pleasure  to  the  ear;  they  carry  no 
sensation  to  the  eye.  You  hear  a sentence  of 
Flaubert,  and  you  see  a sentence  of  Goncourt, 
like  living  things,  with  forms  and  voices.  But 
a page  of  Zola  lies  dull  and  silent  before  you; 
it  draws  you  by  no  charm,  it  has  no  meaning 
until  you  have  read  the  page  that  goes  before 
and  the  page  that  comes  after.  It  is  like 


170  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


cabinet-makers’  work,  solid,  well  fitted  to- 
gether, and  essentially  made  to  be  used. 

Yes,  there  is  no  doubt  that  Zola  writes  very 
badly,  worse  than  any  other  French  writer 
of  eminence.  It  is  true  that  Balzac,  certainly 
one  of  the  greatest,  does,  in  a sense,  write 
badly;  but  his  way  of  writing  badly  is  very 
different  from  Zola’s,  and  leaves  you  with 
the  sense  of  quite  a different  result.  Balzac 
is  too  impatient  with  words;  he  cannot  stay 
to  get  them  all  into  proper  order,  to  pick  and 
choose  among  them.  Night,  the  coffee,  the 
wret  towel,  and  the  end  of  six  hours’  labour 
are  often  too  much  for  him;  and  his  manner 
of  writing  his  novels  on  the  proof-sheets, 
altering  and  expanding  as  fresh  ideas  came 
to  him  on  each  re-reading,  was  not  a way  of 
doing  things  which  can  possibly  result  in 
perfect  writing.  But  Balzac  sins  from  ex- 
cess, from  a feverish  haste,  the  very  extrav- 
agance of  power;  and,  at  all  events,  he 
“sins  strongly.”  Zola  sins  meanly,  he  is 
penuriously  careful,  he  does  the  best  he  possibly 
can ; and  he  is  not  aware  that  his  best  does  not 
answer  all  requirements.  So  long  as  writing 
is  clear  and  not  ungrammatical,  it  seems  to 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD 


171 


him  sufficient.  He  has  not  realised  that  with- 
out charm  there  can  be  no  fine  literature,  as 
there  can  be  no  perfect  flower  without  fra- 
grance. 

And  it  is  here  that  I would  complain,  not 
as  a matter  of  morals,  but  as  a mattei  of  art, 
of  Zola’s  obsession  by  what  is  grossly,  unin- 
terestingly filthy.  There  is  a certain  simile 
in  L’ Assommoir,  used  in  the  most  innocent 
connection,  in  connection  with  a bonnet, 
which  seems  to  me  the  most  abjectly  dirty 
phrase  which  I have  ever  read.  It  is  one  thing 
to  use  dirty  words  to  describe  dirty  things: 
that  may  be  necessary,  and  thus  unexcep- 
tionable. It  is  another  thing  again,  and  this, 
too,  may  well  be  defended  on  artistic  grounds, 
to  be  ingeniously  and  wittily  indecent.  But  I 
do  not  think  a real  man  of  letters  could  pos- 
sibly have  used  such  an  expression  as  the  one 
I am  alluding  to,  or  could  so  meanly  succumb 
to  certain  kinds  of  prurience  which  we  find  in 
Zola’s  work.  Such  a scene  as  the  one  in  which 
Gervaise  comes  home  with  Lantier,  and  finds 
her  husband  lying  drunk  asleep  in  his  own 
vomit,  might  certainly  be  explained  and  even 
excused,  though  few  more  disagreeable  things 


172  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


were  ever  written,  on  the  ground  of  the  psy- 
chological importance  which  it  undoubtedly 
has,  and  the  overwhelming  w^ay  in  which  it 
drives  home  the  point  which  it  is  the  writer’s 
business  to  make.  But  the  worrying  way  in 
which  le  derriere  and  le  ventre  are  constantly 
kept  in  view,  without  the  slightest  necessity, 
is  quite  another  thing.  I should  not  like  to 
say  how  often  the  phrase  “sa  nudite  de  jolie 
fille”  occurs  in  Zola.  Zola’s  nudities  always 
remind  me  of  those  which  you  can  see  in  the 
Foire  au  pain  d’epice  at  Vincennes,  by  pay- 
ing a penny  and  looking  through  a peep- 
hole. In  the  laundry  scenes,  for  instance  in 
L’Assommoir,  he  is  always  reminding  you  that 
the  laundresses  have  turned  up  their  sleeves, 
or  undone  a button  or  two  of  their  bodices. 
His  eyes  seem  eternally  fixed  on  the  inch  or 
two  of  bare  flesh  that  can  be  seen;  and  he 
nudges  your  elbow  at  every  moment,  to  make 
sure  that  you  are  looking  too.  Nothing  may 
be  more  charming  than  a frankly  sensuous 
description  of  things  which  appeal  to  the 
senses;  but  can  one  imagine  anything  less 
charming,  less  like  art,  than  this  prying  eye 
glued  to  the  peep-hole  in  the  Gingerbread  Fair? 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  173 


Yet,  whatever  view  may  be  taken  of  Zola’s 
work  in  literature,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
life  of  Zola  is  a model  lesson,  and  might  prof- 
itably be  told  in  one  of  Dr.  Smiles’s  edifying 
biographies.  It  may  even  be  brought  as  a 
reproach  against  the  writer  of  these  novels, 
in  which  there  are  so  many  offences  against 
the  respectable  virtues,  that  he  is  too  good 
a bourgeois,  too  much  the  incarnation  of  the 
respectable  virtues,  to  be  a man  of  genius. 
If  the  finest  art  comes  of  the  intensest  living, 
then  Zola  has  never  had  even  a chance  of 
doing  the  greatest  kind  of  work.  It  is  his  merit 
and  his  misfortune  to  have  lived  entirely  in 
and  for  his  books,  with  a heroic  devotion  to  his 
ideal  of  literary  duty  which  would  merit  every 
praise  if  we  had  to  consider  simply  the  moral 
side  of  the  question.  So  many  pages  of  copy 
a day,  so  many  hours  of  study  given  to  mys- 
ticism, or  Les  Halles ; Zola  has  always  had  his 
day’s  work  marked  out  before  him,  and  he 
has  never  swerved  from  it.  A recent  life  of 
Zola  tells  us  something  about  his  way  of  get- 
ting up  a subject.  “Immense  preparation 
had  been  necessary  for  the  Faute  de  VAbbe 
Mouret.  Mountains  of  note-books  were 


174  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


heaped  up  on  his  table,  and  for  months  Zola 
was  plunged  in  the  study  of  religious  works. 
All  the  mystical  part  of  the  book,  and  notably 
the  passages  having  reference  to  the  cultus 
of  Mary,  was  taken  from  the  works  of  the 
Spanish  Jesuits.  The  Imitation  of  Jesus 
Christ  was  largely  drawm  upon,  many  passages 
being  copied  almost  word  for  word  into  the 
novel — much  as  in  Clarissa  Harlowe,  that 
other  great  realist,  Richardson,  copied  whole 
passages  from  the  Psalms.  The  description 
of  life  in  a grand  seminary  was  given  him  by 
a priest  who  had  been  dismissed  from  ecclesi- 
astical service.  The  little  church  of  Sainte 
Marie  des  Batignolles  was  regularly  visited.” 

How  commendable  all  that  is,  but,  surely, 
how  futile!  Can  one  conceive  of  a more  hope- 
less, a more  ridiculous  task,  than  that  of 
setting  to  work  on  a novel  of  ecclesiastical 
life  as  if  one  were  cramming  for  an  examina- 
tion in  religious  knowledge?  Zola  apparently 
imagines  that  he  can  master  mysticism  in  a 
fortnight,  as  he  masters  the  police  regulations 
of  Les  Halles.  It  must  be  admitted  that  he 
does  wonders  with  his  second-hand  informa- 
tion, alike  in  regard  to  mysticism  and  Les 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  175 


Halles.  But  he  succeeds  only  to  a certain 
point,  and  that  point  lies  on  the  nearer  side 
of  what  is  really  meant  by  success.  Is  not 
Zola  himself,  at  his  moments,  aware  of  this? 
A letter  written  in  1881,  and  printed  in  Mr. 
Sherard’s  life  of  Zola,  from  which  I have  just 
quoted,  seems  to  me  very  significant. 

“I  continue  to  work  in  a good  state  of  mental 
equilibrium.  My  novel  ( Pot-Bouille ) is  cer- 
tainly only  a task  requiring  precision  and 
clearness.  No  bravoura,  not  the  least  lyrical 
treat.  It  does  not  give  me  any  warm  satis- 
faction, but  it  amuses  me  like  a piece  of 
mechanism  with  a thousand  wheels,  of  which 
it  is  my  duty  to  regulate  the  movements  with 
the  most  minute  care.  I ask  myself  the 
question:  Is  it  good  policy,  when  one  feels 
that  one  has  passion  in  one,  to  check  it,  or 
even  to  bridle  it?  If  one  of  my  books  is 
destined  to  become  immortal,  it  will,  I am 
sure,  be  the  most  passionate  one.” 

Est-elle  en  marbre  ou  non,  la  Venus  de 
Milo  ? said  the  Parnassians,  priding  them- 
selves on  their  muse  with  her  peplum  bien 
sculpte.  Zola  will  describe  to  you  the  exact 
shape  and  the  exact  smell  of  the  rags  of  his 


176  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


naturalistic  muse;  but  has  she,  under  the 
tatters,  really  a human  heart?  In  the  whole 
of  Zola’s  works,  amid  all  his  exact  and  impres- 
sive descriptions  of  misery,  all  his  endless 
annals  of  the  poor,  I know  only  one  episode 
which  brings  tears  to  the  eyes,  the  episode 
of  the  child-martyr  Lalie  in  L’Assommoir. 
“A  piece  of  mechanism  with  a thousand 
wheels,”  that  is  indeed  the  image  of  this 
immense  and  wonderful  study  of  human 
life,  evolved  out  of  the  brain  of  a solitary 
student  wTho  knows  life  only  by  the  report  of 
his  documents,  his  friends,  and,  above  all,  his 
formula. 

Zola  has  defined  art,  very  aptly,  as  nature 
seen  through  a temperament.  The  art  of 
Zola  is  nature  seen  through  a formula.  This 
professed  realist  is  a man  of  theories  who 
studies  life  with  a conviction  that  he  will 
find  there  such  and  such  things  which  he  has 
read  about  in  scientific  books.  He  observes, 
indeed,  with  astonishing  minuteness,  but  he 
observes  in  support  of  preconceived  ideas. 
And  so  powerful  is  his  imagination  that  he 
has  created  a whole  world  which  has  no 
existence  anywhere  but  in  his  own  brain,  and 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD  177 


he  has  placed  there  imaginary  beings,  so  much 
more  logical  than  life,  in  the  midst  of  sur- 
roundings which  are  themselves  so  real  as  to 
lend  almost  a semblance  of  reality  to  the 
embodied  formulas  who  inhabit  them. 

It  is  the  boast  of  Zola  that  he  has  taken 
up  art  at  the  point  where  Flaubert  left  it, 
and  that  he  has  developed  that  art  in  its 
logical  sequence.  But  the  art  of  Flaubert, 
itself  a development  from  Balzac,  had  carried 
realism,  if  not  in  Madame  Bovary,  at  all 
events  in  L’ Education  Sentimentale,  as  far 
as  realism  can  well  go  without  ceasing  to 
be  art.  In  the  grey  and  somewhat  sordid 
history  of  Frederic  Moreau  there  is  not  a touch 
of  romanticism,  not  so  much  as  a concession 
to  style,  a momentary  escape  of  the  imprisoned 
lyrical  tendency.  Everything  is  observed, 
everything  is  taken  straight  from  life:  realism 
sincere,  direct,  implacable,  reigns  from  end  to 
end  of  the  book.  But  with  what  consummate 
art  all  this  mass  of  observation  is  disintegrated, 
arranged,  composed!  with  what  infinite  deli- 
cacy it  is  manipulated  in  the  service  of  an 
unerring  sense  of  construction!  And  Flau- 
bert has  no  theory,  has  no  prejudices,  has 


178  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


only  a certain  impatience  with  human  imbecil- 
ity. Zola,  too,  gathers  his  documents,  heaps 
up  his  mass  of  observation,  and  then,  in  this 
unhappy  “development”  of  the  principles  of 
art  which  produced  L’Education  Senti- 
mentale,  flings  everything  pell-mell  into  one 
overflowing  pot-au-feu.  The  probabilities  of 
nature  and  the  delicacies  of  art  are  alike 
drowned  beneath  a flood  of  turbid  observa- 
tion, and  in  the  end  one  does  not  even  feel 
convinced  that  Zola  really  knows  his  subject. 
I remember  once  hearing  M.  Huysmans,  with 
his  look  and  tone  of  subtle,  ironical  malice, 
describe  how  Zola,  when  he  was  writing  La 
Terre,  took  a drive  into  the  country  in  a 
victoria,  to  see  the  peasants.  The  English 
papers  once  reported  an  interview  in  which 
the  author  of  Nana,  indiscreetly  questioned 
as  to  the  amount  of  personal  observation  he 
had  put  into  the  book,  replied  that  he  had 
lunched  with  an  actress  of  the  Varietes.  The 
reply  was  generally  taken  for  a joke,  but  the 
lunch  was  a reality,  and  it  was  assuredly  a 
rare  experience  in  the  life  of  solitary  diligence 
to  which  we  owe  so  many  impersonal  studies 
in  life.  Nor  did  Zola,  as  he  sat  silent  by  the 


A NOTE  ON  ZOLA’S  METHOD 


179 


side  of  Mile.  X.,  seem  to  be  making  much  use 
of  the  opportunity.  The  language  of  the 
miners  in  Germinal,  how  much  of  local 
colour  is  there  in  that?  The  interminable 
additions  and  divisions,  the  extracts  from  a 
financial  gazette,  in  L’ Argent,  how  much 
of  the  real  temper  and  idiosyncrasy  of  the 
financier  do  they  give  us?  In  his  description 
of  places,  in  his  mise-en-scene,  Zola  puts  down 
what  he  sees  with  his  own  eyes,  and,  though 
it  is  often  done  at  utterly  disproportionate 
length,  it  is  at  all  events  done  with  exactitude. 
But  in  the  far  more  important  observation  of 
men  and  women,  he  is  content  with  second- 
hand knowledge,  the  knowledge  of  a man 
who  sees  the  world  through  a formula.  Zola 
sees  in  humanity  la  bete  humaine.  He  sees 
the  beast  in  all  its  transformations,  but  he  sees 
only  the  beast.  He  has  never  looked  at  life 
impartially,  he  has  never  seen  it  as  it  is.  His 
realism  is  a distorted  idealism,  and  the  man 
who  considers  himself  the  first  to  paint 
humanity  as  it  really  is  will  be  remembered 
in  the  future  as  the  most  idealistic  writer  of 
his  time. 

1893. 


STEPHANE  MALLARME 


1 

Stephane  Mallarme  was  one  of  those  who 
love  literature  too  much  to  write  it  except  by 
fragments;  in  whom  the  desire  of  perfection 
brings  its  own  defeat.  With  either  more  or 
less  ambition  he  would  have  done  more  to 
achieve  himself;  he  was  always  divided  be- 
tween an  absolute  aim  at  the  absolute,  that 
is,  the  unattainable,  and  a too  logical  disdain 
for  the  compromise  by  which,  after  all,  liter- 
ature is  literature.  Carry  the  theories  of 
Mallarme  to  a practical  conclusion,  multiply 
his  powers  in  a direct  ratio,  and  you  have 
Wagner.  It  is  his  failure  not  to  be  Wagner. 
And,  Wagner  having  existed,  it  was  for  him 
to  be  something  more,  to  complete  Wagner. 
Well,  not  being  able  to  be  that,  it  was  a mat- 
ter of  sincere  indifference  to  him  whether  he 
left  one  or  two  little,  limited  masterpieces  of 

iso 


STfiPHANE  MALLARMfi 


181 


formal  verse  and  prose,  the  more  or  the  less. 
It  was  “the  work”  that  he  dreamed  of,  the 
new  art,  more  than  a new  religion,  whose 
precise  form  in  the  world  he  was  never  quite 
able  to  settle. 

Un  auteur  difficile,  in  the  phrase  of  M. 
Catulle  Mendes,  it  has  always  been  to  what 
he  himself  calls  va  labyrinth  illuminated  by 
flowers”  that  Mallarme  has  felt  it  due  to  their 
own  dignity  to  invite  his  readers. ) To  their  own 
dignity,  and  also  to  his.  Mallarme  was  ob- 
scure, not  so  much  because  he  wrote  differently, 
as  because  he  thought  differently,  from  other 
people.  His  mind  was  elliptical,  and,  relying 
with  undue  confidence  on  the  intelligence  of 
his  readers,  he  emphasised  the  effect  of  what 
was  unlike  other  people  in  his  mind  by  reso- 
lutely ignoring  even  the  links  of  connection 
that  existed  between  them.  Never  having 
aimed  at  popularity,  he  never  needed,  as  most 
writers  need,  to  make  the  first  advances.  He 
made  neither  intrusion  upon  nor  concession  to 
those  who,  after  all,  were  not  obliged  to  read 
him.  And  when  he  spoke,  he  considered  it 
neither  needful  nor  seemly  to  listen  in  order 
to  hear  whether  he  was  heard.  To  the  charge 


182  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


of  obscurity  he  replied,  with  sufficient  disdain, 
that  there  are  many  who  do  not  know  how  to 
read — except  the  newspaper,  he  adds,  in  one 
of  those  disconcerting,  oddly-printed  paren- 
theses, which  make  his  work,  to  those  who 
rightly  apprehend  it,  so  full  of  wise  limitations, 
so  safe  from  hasty  or  seemingly  final  conclu- 
sions. No  one  in  our  time  has  more  sig- 
nificantly vindicated  the  supreme  right  of  the 
artist  in  the  aristocracy  of  letters;  wilfully, 
perhaps,  not  always  wisely,  but  nobly,  logically. 
Has  not  every  artist  shrunk  from  that  making 
of  himself  “a  motley  to  the  view,”  that  hand- 
ing over  of  his  naked  soul  to  the  laughter  of 
the  multitude?  But  who,  in  our  time,  has 
wrought  so  subtle  a veil,  shining  on  this  side, 
where  the  few  are,  a thick  cloud  on  the  other, 
where  are  the  many?  The  oracles  have  always 
had  the  wisdom  to  hide  their  secrets  in  the 
obscurity  of  many  meanings,  or  of  what  has 
seemed  meaningless;  and  might  it  not,  after 
all,  be  the  finest  epitaph  for  a self-respecting 
man  of  letters  to  be  able  to  say,  even  after  the 
writing  of  many  books:  I have  kept  my 
secret,  I have  not  betrayed  myself  to  the 
multitude? 


STEPHENE  MALLARME 


183 


But  to  Mallarm6,  certainly,  there  might 
be  applied  the  significant  warning  of  Rossetti: 

Yet  woe  to  thee  if  once  thou  yield 

Unto  the  act  of  doing  nought! 

After  a life  of  persistent  devotion  to  literature, 
he  has  left  enough  poems  to  make  a single 
small  volume  (less,  certainly,  than  a hundred 
poems  in  all),  a single  volume  of  prose,  a 
few  pamphlets,  and  a prose  translation  of  the 
poems  of  Poe.  It  is  because  among  these 
there  are  masterpieces,  poems  which  are  among 
the  most  beautiful  poems  written  in  our  time, 
prose  which  has  all  the  subtlest  qualities  of 
prose,  that,  quitting  the  abstract  point  of  view, 
we  are  forced  to  regret  the  fatal  enchantments, 
fatal  for  him,  of  theories  which  are  so  greatly 
needed  by  others,  so  valuable  for  our  instruc- 
tion, if  we  are  only  a little  careful  in  putting 
them  into  practice. 

In  estimating  the  significance  of  St^phane 
Mallarme,  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  account 
not  only  his  verse  and  prose,  but,  almost 
more  than  these,  the  Tuesdays  of  the  Rue  de 
Rome,  in  which  he  gave  himself  freely  to 
more  than  one  generation.  No  one  who  has 
ever  climbed  those  four  flights  of  stairs  will 


184  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


have  forgotten  the  narrow,  homely  interior, 
elegant  with  a sort  of  scrupulous  Dutch  com- 
fort; the  heavy,  carved  furniture,  the  tall 
clock,  the  portraits,  Manet’s,  Whistler’s,  on 
the  walls;  the  table  on  which  the  china  bowl, 
odorous  with  tobacco,  was  pushed  from  hand 
to  hand;  above  all,  the  rocking-chair,  Mal- 
larm6’s,  from  which  he  would  rise  quietly, 
to  stand  leaning  his  elbow  on  the  mantel- 
piece, while  one  hand,  the  hand  which  did  not 
hold  the  cigarette,  would  sketch  out  one  of 
those  familiar  gestures:  un  peu  de  pretre, 
un  peu  de  danseuse  (in  M.  Rodenbach’s  admir- 
able phrase),  avec  lesquels  il  avait  Vair  chaque 
fois  d'entrer  dans  la  conversation,  comme  on 
entre  en  scene.  One  of  the  best  talkers  of  our 
time,  he  was,  unlike  most  other  fine  talkers, 
harmonious  with  his  own  theories  in  giving  no 
monologues,  in  allowing  every  liberty  to  his 
guests,  to  the  conversation;  in  his  perfect 
readiness  to  follow  the  slightest  indication,  to 
embroider  upon  any  frame,  with  any  material 
presented  to  him.  There  would  have  been 
something  almost  of  the  challenge  of  the  im- 
provisatore  in  this  easily  moved  alertness  of 
mental  attitude,  had  it  not  been  for  the  sin- 


ST£?HANE  MALLARMfi 


185 


gular  gentlene&s  with  which  Mallarme’s  intel- 
ligence moved,  in  these  considerable  feats,  with 
the  half-apologetic  negligence  of  the  perfect 
acrobat.  He  seemed  to  be  no  more  than 
brushing  the  dust  off  your  own  ideas,  settling, 
arranging  them  a little,  before  he  gave  them 
back  to  you,  surprisingly  luminous.  It  was 
only  afterwards  that  you  realised  how  small 
had  been  your  own  part  in  the  matter,  as  well 
as  what  it  meant  to  have  enlightened  without 
dazzling  you.  But  there  was  always  the  feel- 
ing of  comradeship,  the  comradeship  of  a 
master,  whom,  while  you  were  there  at  least, 
you  did  not  question;  and  that  very  feeling 
lifted  you,  in  your  own  estimation,  nearer  to 
art. 

Invaluable,  it  seems  to  me,  those  Tuesdays 
must  have  been  to  the  young  men  of  two 
generations  who  have  been  making  French 
literature;  they  were  unique,  certainly,  in 
the  experience  of  the  young  Englishman  who 
was  always  so  cordially  received  there,  with 
so  flattering  a cordiality.  Here  was  a house 
in  which  art,  literature,  was  the  very  atmos- 
phere, a religious  atmosphere;  and  the  master 
of  the  house,  in  his  just  a little  solemn  sim- 


186  THE  SYMBOLIST  MO\  EMENT 


plicity,  a priest.  I never  heard  the  price  of  a 
book  mentioned,  or  the  numbsr  of  thousand 
francs  which  a popular  author  had  been  paid 
for  his  last  volume;  here,  in  tiis  one  literary 
house,  literature  was  unknowi.  as  a trade. 
And,  above  all,  the  questions  that  were  dis- 
cussed were  never,  at  least,  in  Mallarme’s 
treatment,  in  his  guidance  of  them,  other  than 
essential  questions,  considerations  of  art  in 
the  abstract,  of  literature  before  it  coagulates 
into  a book,  of  life  as  its  amusing  and  various 
web  spins  the  stuff  of  art.  When,  indeed,  the 
conversation,  by  some  untimely  hazard,  drifted 
too  near  to  one,  became  for  a moment,  perhaps 
inconveniently,  practical,  it  was  Mallarme’s 
solicitous  politeness  to  wait,  a little  constrained, 
almost  uneasy,  rolling  his  cigarette  in  silence, 
until  the  disturbing  moment  had  passed. 

There  were  other  disturbing  moments,  some- 
times. I remember  one  night,  rather  late,  the 
sudden  irruption  of  M.  de  Heredia,  coming  on 
after  a dinner-party,  and  seating  himself  in  his 
well-filled  evening  dress,  precisely  in  Mal- 
larme’s favourite  chair.  He  was  intensely 
amusing,  voluble,  floridly  vehement;  Mal- 
larm6,  I am  sure,  was  delighted  to  see  him; 


STfiPHANE  MALLARMfi 


187 


but  the  loud  voice  was  a little  trying  to  his 
nerves,  and  then  he  did  not  know  what  to  do 
without  his  chair.  He  was  like  a cat  that  has 
been  turned  out  of  its  favourite  corner,  as  he 
roamed  uneasily  about  the  room,  resting  an 
unaccustomed  elbow  on  the  sideboard,  visibly 
at  a disadvantage. 

For  the  attitude  of  those  young  men,  some 
of  them  no  longer  exactly  young,  who  fre- 
quented the  Tuesdays,  was  certainly  the  atti- 
tude of  the  disciple.  Mallarme  never  exacted 
it,  he  seemed  never  to  notice  it;  yet  it  meant 
to  him,  all  the  same,  a good  deal;  as  it  meant, 
and  in  the  best  sense,  a good  deal  to  them. 
He  loved  art  with  a supreme  disinterestedness, 
and  it  was  for  the  sake  of  art  that  he  wished  to 
be  really  a master.  For  he  knew  that  he  had 
something  to  teach,  that  he  had  found  out 
some  secrets  worth  knowing,  that  he  had  dis- 
covered a point  of  view  which  he  could  to  some 
degree  perpetuate  in  those  young  men  who  lis- 
tened to  him.  And  to  them  this  free  kind  of 
apprenticeship  was,  beyond  all  that  it  gave  in 
direct  counsels,  in  the  pattern  of  work,  a 
noble  influence.  Mallarme’s  quiet,  laborious 
life  was  for  some  of  them  the  only  counterpoise 


188  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


to  the  Bohemian  example  of  the  d’Harcourt 
or  the  Taverne,  where  art  is  loved,  but  with 
something  of  haste,  in  a very  changing  devo- 
tion. It  was  impossible  to  come  away  from 
Mallarme’s  without  some  tranquillising  influ- 
ence from  that  quiet  place,  some  impersonal 
ambition  towards  excellence,  the  resolve,  at 
least,  to  write  a sonnet,  a page  of  prose,  that 
should  be  in  its  own  way  as  perfect  as  one 
could  make  it,  worthy  of  Mallarme. 


2 


“ Poetry,”  said  Mallarme,  “is  the  language 
of  a state  of  crisis”;  and  all  his  poems  are 
the  evocation  of  a passing  ecstasy,  arrested 
in  mid-flight.  This  ecstasy"is~never  the  mere 
instinctive  cry  of  the  heart,  the  simple  human 
joy  or  sorrow,  which,  like  the  Parnassians, 
but  for  not  quite  the  same  reason,  he  did  not 
admit  in  poetry.  It  is  a mental  transposition 
| of  emotion  or  sensation,  veiled  with  atmos- 
phere, and  becoming,  as  it  becomes  a poem, 
J~  pure  beauty.  Here,  for  instance,  in  a poem, 
which  I have  translated  line  for  line,  and  ahnost 
word  for  word,  a delicate  emotion,  a figure 


STEPHANE  MALLARME 


189 


vaguely  divined,  a landscape  magically  evoked, 
blend  in  a single  effect. 

SIGH 

My  soul,  calm  sister,  towards  thy  brow,  whereon  scarce 
grieves 

An  autumn  strewn  already  with  its  russet  leaves, 

And  towards  the  wandering  sky  of  thine  angelic  eyes , 

Mounts,  as  in  melancholy  gardens  may  arise 

Some  faithful  fountain  sighing  whitely  towards  the  blue! 

— Towards  the  blue  pale  and  pure  that  sad  October  knew, 
When,  in  those  depths,  it  mirrored  languors  infinite, 

And  agonising  leaves  upon  the  waters  white, 

Windily  drifting,  traced  a furrow  cold  and  dun, 

Where,  in  one  long  last  ray,  lingered  the  yellow  sun. 

Another  poem  comes  a little  closer  to 
nature,  but  with  what  exquisite  precautions, 
and  with  what  surprising  novelty  in  its  un- 
hesitating touch  on  actual  things! 

SEA-WIND 

The  flesh  is  sad,  alas!  and  all  the  books  are  read. 

Flight,  only  flight!  I feel  that  birds  are  wild  to  tread 
The  floor  of  unknown  foam,  and  to  attain  the  skies! 
Nought,  neither  ancient  gardens  mirrored  in  the  eyes, 

Shall  hold  this  heart  that  bathes  in  waters  its  delight, 

0 nights!  nor  yet  my  waking  lamp,  whose  lonely  light 
Shadows  the  vacant  paper,  whiteness  profits  best, 

Nor  the  young  wife  who  rocks  her  baby  on  her  breast. 

1 will  depart.  O steamer,  swaying  rope  and  spar, 

Lift  anchor  for  exotic  lands  that  lie  afar! 


190  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


A weariness,  outworn  by  cruel  hopes,  still  clings 
To  the  last  farewell  handkerchief’s  last  beckonings! 

And  are  not  these,  the  masts  inviting  storms,  not  these 
That  an  awakening  wind  bends  over  wrecking  seas, 

Lost,  not  a sail,  a sail,  a flowering  isle,  ere  long? 

But,  O my  heart,  hear  thou,  hear  thou  the  sailors’  song! 

These  (need  I say?)  belong  to  the  earlier 
period,  in  which  Mallarm6  had  not  yet  with- 
drawn his  light  into  the  cloud;  and  to  the 
same  period  belong  the  prose-poems,  one  of 
which,  perhaps  the  most  exquisite,  I will 
translate  here. 


AUTUMN  LAMENT 

“Ever  since  Maria  left  me,  for  another 
star — which?  Orion,  Altair,  or  thou,  green 
Venus? — I have  alwTays  cherished  solitude. 
How  many  long  days  I have  passed,  alone 
with  my  cat!  By  alone,  I mean  without 
a material  being,  and  my  cat  is  a mystical 
companion,  a spirit.  I may  say,  then,  that 
I have  passed  long  days  alone  with  my  cat, 
and  alone,  with  one  of  the  last  writers  of 
the  Roman  decadence;  for  since  the  white 
creature  is  no  more,  strangely  and  singularly, 
I have  loved  all  that  may  be  summed  up 
in  the  word:  fall.  Thus,  in  the  year,  my 


stEphane  mallarmE 


191 


favourite  season  is  during  those  last  languid 
summer  days  which  come  just  before  the 
autumn;  and,  in  the  day,  the  hour  when  I 
take  my  walk  is  the  hour  when  the  sun  lin- 
gers before  fading,  with  rays  of  copper- 
yellow  on  the  grey  walls,  and  of  copper-red 
on  the  window-panes.  And,  just  so,  the 
literature  from  which  my  soul  demands  de- 
light must  be  the  poetry  dying  out  of  the 
last  moments  of  Rome,  provided,  neverthe- 
less, that  it  breathes  nothing  of  the  rejuvenat- 
ing approach  of  the  Barbarians,  and  does 
not  stammer  the  infantile  Latin  of  the  first 
Christian  prose. 

“I  read,  then,  one  of  those  beloved  poems 
(whose  streaks  of  rouge  have  more  charm 
for  me  than  the  fresh  cheek  of  youth),  and 
buried  my  hand  in  the  fur  of  the  pure  ani- 
mal, when  a barrel-organ  began  to  sing, 
languishingly  and  melancholy,  under  my  win- 
dow. It  played  in  the  long  alley  of  poplars, 
whose  leaves  seem  mournful  to  me  even 
in  spring,  since  Maria  passed  that  way  with 
the  tapers,  for  the  last  time.  Yes,  sad 
people’s  instrument,  truly:  the  piano  glitters, 
the  violin  brings  one’s  torn  fibres  to  the 


192  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


light,  but  the  barrel-organ,  in  the  twilight  of 
memory,  has  set  me  despairingly  dreaming. 
While  it  murmured  a gaily  vulgar  air,  such 
as  puts  mirth  into  the  heart  of  the  suburbs, 
an  old-fashioned,  an  empty  air,  how  came  it 
that  its  refrain  went  to  my  very  soul,  and 
made  me  weep  like  a romantic  ballad?  I 
drank  it  in,  and  I did  not  throw  a penny 
out  of  the  window,  for  fear  of  disturbing  my 
own  impression,  and  of  perceiving  that  the 
instrument  was  not  singing  by  itself.” 

Between  these  characteristic,  clear,  and 
beautiful  poems,  in  verse  and  in  prose,  and 
the  opaque  darkness  of  the  later  writings, 
come  one  or  two  poems,  perhaps  the  finest 
of  all,  in  which  already  clearness  is  “a  sec- 
ondary grace,”  but  in  which  a subtle  rapture 
finds  incomparable  expression.  L’Apres-midi 
d’un  Faune  and  Herodiade  have  already  been 
introduced,  in  different  ways,  to  English 
readers:  the  former  by  Mr.  Gosse,  in  a 
detailed  analysis;  the  latter  by  a transla- 
tion into  verse.  And  Debussy,  in  his  new 
music,  has  taken  L’Apres-midi  d’un  Faune 
almost  for  his  new  point  of  departure,  in- 
terpreting it,  at  all  events,  faultlessly.  In 


stEphane  mallarmE 


193 


these  two  poems  I find  Mallarm6  at  the 
moment  when  his  own  desire  achieves  itself; 
when  he  attains  Wagner’s  ideal,  that  “the 
most  complete  work  of  the  poet  should  be 
that  which,  in  its  final  achievement,  be- 
comes a perfect  music”:  every  word  is  a 
jewel,  scattering  and  recapturing  sudden  fire, 
every  image  is  a symbol,  and  the  whole  poem 
is  visible  music.  After  this  point  began 
that  fatal  “last  period”  which  comes  to 
most  artists  who  have  thought  too  curiously, 
or  dreamed  too  remote  dreams,  or  followed 
a too  wandering  beauty.  Mallarme  had  long 
been  too  conscious  that  all  publication  is 
“almost  a speculation,  on  one’s  modesty,  for 
one’s  silence”;  that  “to  unclench  the  fists, 
breaking  one’s  sedentary  dream,  for  a ruffling 
face  to  face  with  the  idea,”  was  after  all 
unnecessary  to  his  own  conception  of  him- 
self, a mere  way  of  convincing  the  public 
that  one  exists;  and  having  achieved,  as  he 
thought,  “the  right  to  abstain  from  doing 
anything  exceptional,”  he  devoted  himself, 
doubly,  to  silence1.  Seldom  condescending  to 
write,  ne—wrote  now  only  for  himself,  and 
in  a manner  which  certainly  saved  him  from 


194  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


intrusion.  Some  of  Meredith’s  poems,  and 
occasional  passages  of  his  prose,  can  alone 
give  in  English  some  faint  idea  of  the  later 
prose  and  verse  of  Mallarme.  The  verse 
could  not,  I think,  be  translated;  of  the 
prose,  in  which  an  extreme  lucidity  of  thought 
comes  to  us  but  glimmeringly  through  the 
entanglements  of  a construction,  part  Latin, 
part  English,  I shall  endeavour  to  translate 
some  fragments,  in  speaking  of  the  theo- 
retic writings,  contained  in  the  two  volumes 
of  Vers  et  Prose  and  Divagations. 

3 

It  is  the  distinction  of  Mallarm6  to  have 
aspired  after  an  impossible  liberation  of  the 
soul  of  literature  from  what  is  fretting  and 
constraining  in  “the  body  of  that  death,” 
which  is  the  mere  literature  of  words.  Words, 
he  has  realised,  are  of  value  only  as  a nota- 
tion of  the  free  breath  of  the  spirit;  words, 
therefore,  must  be  employed  with  an  extreme 
care,  in  their  choice  and  adjustment,  in  set- 
ting them  to  reflect  and  chime  upon  one 
another;  yet  least  of  all  for  their  own  sake, 


STfiPHANE  MALLARMfi 


195 


for  what  they  can  never,  except  by  suggestion, 
express.  “Every  soul  is  a melocfy,”  he  has 
said,  “which  needs  to  be  readjusted;  and  for 
that  are  the  flute  or  viol  of  each.”  The  word, 
treated  indeed  with  a kind  of  “adoration,” 
as  he  says,  is  so  regarded  in  a magnificent 
sense,  in  which  it  is  apprehended  as  a living 
thing,  itself  the  vision  rather  than  the  reality; 
at  least  the  philtre  of  the  evocation.  The 
word,  chosen  as  he  chooses  it,  is  for  him  a 
liberating  principle,  by  which  the  spirit  is 
extracted  from  matter;  takes  form,  perhaps 
assumes  immortality.  Thus  an  artificiality, 
even,  in  the  use  of  words,  that  seeming  arti- 
ficiality which  comes  from  using  words  as  if 
they  had  never  been  used  before,  that  chi- 
merical search  after  the  virginity  of  language, 
is  but  the  paradoxical  outward  sign  of  an 
extreme  discontent  with  even  the  best  of  their 
service.  Writers  who  use  words  fluently, 
seeming  to  disregard  their  importance,  do  so 
from  an  unconscious  confidence  in  their  ex- 
pressiveness, which  the  scrupulous  thinker, 
the  precise  dreamer,  can  never  place  in  the 
most  carefully  chosen  among  them.  To  evoke, 
by  some  elaborate,  instantaneous  magic  of 


196  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


language,  without  the  formality  of  an  after 
all  impossible  description;  to  be,  rather  than 
to  express:  that  is  what  Mallarm4  has  con- 
sistently, and  from  the  first,  sought  in  verse 
and  prose.  And  he  has  sought  this  wander- 
ing, illusive,  beckoning  butterfly,  the  soul 
of  dreams,  over  more  and  more  entangled 
ground;  and  it  has  led  him  into  the  depths 
of  many  forests,  far  from  the  sunlight.  To 
say  that  he  has  found  what  he  sought  is 
impossible;  but  (is  it  possible  to  avoid  say- 
ing?) how  heroic  a search,  and  what  marvel- 
lous discoveries  by  the  way! 

I think  I understand,  though  I cannot 
claim  his  own  authority  for  my  supposition, 
the  wray  in  which  Mallarm4  wrote  verse,  and 
the  reason  why  it  became  more  and  more 
abstruse,  more  and  more  unintelligible.  Re- 
member his  principle:  that  to  name  is  to 
destroy,  to  suggest  is  to  create.  Note,  fur- 
ther, that  he  condemns  the  inclusion  in  verse 
of  anything  but,  “for  example,  the  horror 
of  the  forest,  or  the  silent  thunder  afloat 
in  the  leaves;  not  the  intrinsic,  dense  wood 
of  the  trees.”  He  has  received,  then,  a men- 
tal sensation:  let  it  be  the  horror  of  the 


STfiPHAME  MALLARME 


197 


forest.  This  sensation  begins  to  form  in 
his  brain,  at  first  probably  no  more  than  a 
rhythm,  absolutely  without  words.  Gradu- 
ally thought  begins  to  concentrate  itself  (but 
with  an  extreme  care,  lest  it  should  break 
the  tension  on  which  all  depends)  upon  the 
sensation,  already  struggling  to  find  its  own 
consciousness.  Delicately,  stealthily,  with  in- 
finitely timid  precaution,  words  present  them- 
selves, at  first  in  silence.  Every  word  seems 
like  a desecration,  seems,  the  clearer  it  is, 
to  throw  back  the  original  sensation  farther 
and  farther  into  the  darkness.  But,  guided 
always  by  the  rhythm,  which  is  the  execu- 
tive soul  (as,  in  Aristotle’s  definition,  the 
soul  is  the  form  of  the  body),  words  come 
slowly,  one  by  one,  shaping  the  message. 
Imagine  the  poem  already  written  down,  at 
least  composed.  In  its  very  imperfection,  it 
is  clear,  it  shows  the  links  by  which  it  has 
been  riveted  together;  the  whole  process  of 
its  construction  can  be  studied.  Now  most 
writers  would  be  content;  but  with  Mallarm6 
the  work  has  only  begun.  In  the  final  result 
there  must  be  no  sign  of  the  making,  there 
must  be  only  the  thing  made.  He  works 


198  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


over  it,  word  by  word,  changing  a word  here, 
for  its  colour,  which  is  not  precisely  the 
colour  required,  a word  there,  for  the  break 
it  makes  in  the  music.  A new  image  occurs 
to  him,  rarer,  subtler,  than  the  one  he  has 
used;  the  image  is  transferred.  By  the  time 
the  poem  has  reached,  as  it  seems  to  him, 
a flawless  unity,  the  steps  of  the  progress 
have  been  only  too  effectually  effaced;  and 
while  the  poet,  who  has  seen  the  thing  from 
the  beginning,  still  sees  the  relation  of  point 
to  point,  the  reader,  who  comes  to  it  only 
in  its  final  stage,  finds  himself  in  a not  un- 
natural bewilderment.  Pursue  this  manner 
of  writing  to  its  ultimate  development  ; start 
with  an  enigma,  and  then  withdraw  the  key 
of  the  enigma;  and  you  arrive,  easily,  at  the 
frozen  impenetrability  of  those  latest  sonnets, 
in  which  the  absence  of  all  punctuation  is 
scarcely  a recognisable  hindrance. 

That,  I fancy  to  myself,  was  his  actual  way 
of  writing;  here,  in  what  I prefer  to  give  as  a 
corollary,  is  the  theory.  “Symbolist,  Deca- 
dent, or  Mystic,  the  schools  thus  called  by 
themselves,  or  thus  hastily  labelled  by  our 
information-press,  adopt,  for  meeting-place, 


STEPHANE  MALLARME 


199 


the  point  of  an  Idealism  which  (similarly  as 
in  fugues,  in  sonatas)  rejects  the  ‘natural’ 
materials,  and,  as  brutal,  a direct  thought 
ordering  them;  to  retain  no  more  than  sug- 
gestion. To  be  instituted,  a relation  between 
images,  exact;  and  that  therefrom  should 
detach  itself  a third  aspect,  fusible  and  clear, 
offered  to  the  divination.  Abolished,  the  pre- 
tension, aesthetically  an  error,  despite  its 
dominion  over  almost  all  the  masterpieces, 
to  enclose  within  the  subtle  paper  other  than, 
for  example,  the  horror  of  the  forest,  or  the 
silent  thunder  afloat  in  the  leaves;  not  the 
intrinsic,  dense  wood  of  the  trees.  Some  few 
bursts  of  personal  pride,  veridically  trumpeted, 
awaken  the  architecture  of  the  palace,  alone 
habitable;  not  of  stone,  on  which  the  pages 
would  close  but  ill.”  For  example  (it  is  his 
own) : “I  say:  a flower!  and  out  of  the  oblivion 
to  which  my  voice  consigns  every  contour,  so 
far  as  anything  save  the  known  calyx,  music- 
ally arises,  idea,  and  exquisite,  the  one  flower 
absent  from  all  bouquets. ’ ’ ‘ ‘ The  pure  work, ’ ’ 

then,  “implies  the  elocutionary  disappearance 
of  the  poet,  who  yields  place  to  the  words, 
immobilised  by  the  shock  of  their  inequality; 


200  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


they  take  light  from  mutual  reflection,  like 
an  actual  trail  of  fire  over  precious  stones, 
replacing  the  old  lyric  afflatus  or  the  enthu- 
siastic personal  direction  of  the  phrase.” 
“The  verse  which  out  of  many  vocables 
remakes  an  entire  word,  new,  unknown  to 
the  language,  and  as  if  magical,  attains  this 
isolation  of  speech.”  Whence,  it  being  “music 
which  rejoins  verse,  to  form,  since  Wagner, 
Poetry,”  the  final  conclusion:  “That  we  are 
now  precisely  at  the  moment  of  seeking,  be- 
fore that  breaking  up  of  the  large  rhythms  of 
literature,  and  their  scattering  in  articulate, 
almost  instrumental,  nervous  waves,  an  art 
which  shall  complete  the  transposition,  into 
the  Book,  of  the  symphony  or  simply  recapture 
our  own:  for,  it  is  not  in  elementary  sonorities 
of  brass,  strings,  wood,  unquestionably,  but 
in  the  intellectual  word  at  its  utmost,  that, 
fully  and  evidently,  we  should  find,  drawing 
to  itself  all  the  correspondences  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  supreme  Music.” 

Here,  literally  translated,  in  exactly  the 
arrangement  of  the  original,  are  some  pas- 
sages out  of  the  theoretic  writings,  which  I 
have  brought  together,  to  indicate  what  seem 


stEphane  mallarmE 


201 


to  me  the  main  lines  of  Mallarm6’s  doctrine. 
It  is  the  doctrine  which,  as  I have  already 
said,  had  been  divined  by  Gerard  de  Nerval; 
but  what,  in  Gerard,  was  pure  vision,  be- 
comes in  Mallarm6  a logical  sequence  of 
meditation.  Mallarme  was  not  a mystic,  to 
whom  anything  came  unconsciously;  he  was) 
a thinker,  in  whom  an  extraordinary  subtlety* 
of  mind  was  exercised  on  always  explicit, 
though  by  no  means  the  common,  problems. 
“A  seeker  after  something  in  the  world,  that 
is  there  in  no  satisfying  measure,  or  not  at 
all,”  he  pursued  his  search  with  unwearying 
persistence  with  a sharp  mental  division  of 
dream  and  idea,  certainly  very  lucid  to  him- 
self, however  he  may  have  failed  to  render 
his  expression  clear  to  others.  And  I,  for  one, 
cannot  doubt  that  he  was,  for  the  most  part, 
entirely  right  in  his  statement  and  analysis  of 
the  new  conditions  under  which  we  are  now 
privileged  or  condemned  to  write.  His  ob- 
scurity was  partly  his  failure  to  carry  out  the 
spirit  of  his  own  directions;  but,  apart  from 
obscurity,  which  we  may  all  be  fortunate 
enough  to  escape,  is  it  possible  for  a writer, 
at  the  present  day,  to  be  quite  simple,  with  the 


202  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


old,  objective  simplicity,  in  either  thought  or 
expression?  To  be  naif,  to  be  archaic,  is  not 
to  be  either  natural  or  simple;  I affirm  that 
it  is  not  natural  to  be  what  is  called  “natural” 
any  longer.  We  have  no  longer  the  mental 
attitude  of  those  to  whom  a story  was  but  a 
story,  and  all  stories  good;  we  have  realised 
since  it  was  proved  to  us  by  Poe,  not  merely 
that  the  age  of  epics  is  past,  but  that  no  long 
poem  was  ever  written;  the  finest  long  poem 
in  the  world  being  but  a series  of  short  poems 
linked  together  by  prose.  And,  naturally,  we 
can  no  longer  write  what  we  can  no  longer 
accept.  Symbolism,  implicit  in  all  literature 
from  the  beginning,  as  it  is  implicit  in  the  very 
words  we  use,  comes  to  us  now,  at  last  quite 
conscious  of  itself,  offering  us  the  only  escape 
from  our  many  imprisonments.  We  find  a 
new,  an  older,  sense  in  the  so  worn-out  forms 
of  things;  the  wmrld,  which  we  can  no  longer 
believe  in  as  the  satisfying  material  object  it 
was  to  our  grandparents,  becomes  transfigured 
with  a new  light;  words,  which  long  usage 
had  darkened  almost  out  of  recognition,  take 
fresh  lustre.  And  it  is  on  the  lines  of  that 
spiritualising  of  the  word,  that  perfecting  of 


4- 


STfiPHANE  MALLARMfi 


203 


form  in  its  capacity  for  allusion  and  sugges- 
tion, that  confidence  in  the  eternal  corre- 
spondences between  the  visible  and  the  invis- 
ible universe,  which  Mallarme  taught,  and  too 
intermittently  practised,  that  literature  must 
now  move,  if  it  is  in  any  sense  to  move  forward. 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


1 

“ Bien  affectueusement  . . . yours,  P.  Ver- 
laine.” So,  in  its  gay  and  friendly  mingling  of 
French  and  English,  ended  the  last  letter  I 
had  from  Verlaine.  A few  days  afterwards 
came  the  telegram  from  Paris  telling  me  of  his 
death,  in  the  Rue  Descartes,  on  that  8th  Jan- 
uary, 1896. 

“Condemned  to  death,”  as  he  was,  in  Vic- 
tor Hugo’s  phrase  of  men  in  general,  “with  a 
sort  of  indefinite  reprieve,”  and  gravely  ill  as 
I had  for  some  time  known  him  to  be,  it  was  still 
with  a shock,  not  only  of  sorrow,  but  of  sur- 
prise, that  I heard  the  news  of  his  death.  He 
had  suffered  and  survived  so  much,  and  I 
found  it  so  hard  to  associate  the  idea  of  death 
wdth  one  who  had  always  been  so  passionately 
in  love  with  life,  more  passionately  in  love 
with  life  than  any  man  I ever  knew.  Rest 
was  one  of  the  delicate  privileges  of  life  which 

204 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


205 


he  never  loved:  he  did  but  endure  it  with 
grumbling  gaiety  when  a hospital-bed  claimed 
him.  And  whenever  he  spoke  to  me  of  the 
long  rest  which  has  now  sealed  his  eyelids,  it 
was  with  a shuddering  revolt  from  the  thought 
of  ever  going  away  into  the  cold,  out  of  the 
sunshine  which  had  been  so  warm  to  him. 
With  all  his  pains,  misfortunes,  and  the  calam- 
ities which  followed  him  step  by  step  all  his 
life,  I think  few  men  ever  got  so  much  out  of 
their  lives,  or  lived  so  fully,  so  intensely,  with 
such  a genius  for  living.  That,  indeed,  is  why 
he  was  a great  poet.  Verlaine  was  a man  who 
gave  its  full  value  to  every  moment,  who  got 
out  of  every  moment  all  that  that  moment 
had  to  give  him.  It  was  not  always,  not  often, 
perhaps,  pleasure.  But  it  was  energy,  the 
vital  force  of  a nature  which  was  always  receiv- 
ing and  giving  out,  never  at  rest,  never  passive, 
or  indifferent,  or  hesitating.  It  is  impossible 
for  me  to  convey  to  those  who  did  not  know 
him  any  notion  of  how  sincere  he  was.  The 
word  “sincerity”  seems  hardly  to  have  em- 
phasis enough  to  say,  in  regard  to  this  one  man, 
what  it  says,  adequately  enough,  of  others. 
He  sinned,  and  it  was  with  all  his  humanity; 


206  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


he  repented,  and  it  was  with  all  his  soul.  And 
to  every  occurrence  of  the  day,  to  every  mood 
of  the  mind,  to  every  impulse  of  the  creative 
instinct,  he  brought  the  same  unparalleled 
sharpness  of  sensation.  When,  in  1894,  he 
was  my  guest  in  London,  I was  amazed  by  the 
exactitude  of  his  memory  of  the  mere  turnings 
of  the  streets,  the  shapes  and  colours  of  the 
buildings,  which  he  had  not  seen  for  twenty 
years.  He  saw,  he  felt,  he  remembered,  every- 
thing, with  an  unconscious  mental  selection  of 
the  fine  shades,  the  essential  part  of  things,  or 
precisely  those  aspects  which  most  other  people 
would  pass  by. 

Few  poets  of  our  time  have  been  more  often 
drawn,  few  have  been  easier  to  draw,  few  have 
better  repaid  drawing,  than  Paul  Verlaine. 
A face  without  a beautiful  line,  a face  all  char- 
acter, full  of  somnolence  and  sudden  fire,  in 
which  every  irregularity  was  a kind  of  aid  to 
the  hand,  could  not  but  tempt  the  artist  desir- 
ing at  once  to  render  a significant  likeness  and 
to  have  his  own  part  in  the  creation  of  a pic- 
ture. Verlaine,  like  all  men  of  genius,  had 
something  of  the  air  of  the  somnambulist : 
that  profound  slumber  of  the  face,  as  it  was  in 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


207 


him,  with  its  startling  awakenings.  It  was  a 
face  devoured  by  dreams,  feverish  and  som- 
nolent; it  had  earthly  passion,  intellectual 
pride,  spiritual  humility;  the  air  of  one  who 
remembers,  not  without  an  effort,  who  is  lis- 
tening, half  distractedly  to  something  which 
other  people  do  not  hear;  coming  back  so 
suddenly,  and  from  so  far,  with  the  relief  of 
one  who  steps  out  of  that  obscure  shadow  into 
the  noisier  forgetfulness  of  life.  The  eyes, 
often  half  closed,  were  like  the  eyes  of  a cat 
between  sleeping  and  waking;  eyes  in  which 
contemplation  was  “itself  an  act.”  A remark- 
able lithograph  by  Mr.  Rothenstein  (the  face 
lit  by  oblique  eyes,  the  folded  hands  thrust 
into  the  cheek)  gives  with  singular  truth  the 
sensation  of  that  restless  watch  on  things  which 
this  prisoner  of  so  many  chains  kept  without 
slackening.  To  Verlaine  every  corner  of  the 
world  was  alive  with  tempting  and  consoling 
and  terrifying  beauty.  I have  never  known 
any  one  to  whom  the  sight  of  the  eyes  was  so 
intense  and  imaginative  a thing.  To  him, 
physical  sight  and  spiritual  vision,  by  some 
strange  alchemical  operation  of  the  brain, 
were  one.  And  in  the  disquietude  of  his  face, 


208  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


which  seemed  to  take  such  close  heed  of  things, 
precisely  because  it  was  sufficiently  apart  from 
them  to  be  always  a spectator,  there  was  a 
realisable  process  of  vision  continually  going 
on,  in  which  all  the  loose  ends  of  the  visible 
world  were  being  caught  up  into  a new  mental 
fabric. 

And  along  with  this  fierce  subjectivity, 
into  which  the  egoism  of  the  artist  entered 
so  unconsciously,  and  in  which  it  counted  for 
so  much,  there  was  more  than  the  usual 
amount  of  childishness,  always  in  some  meas- 
ure present  in  men  of  genius.  There  was 
a real,  almost  blithe,  childishness  in  the 
way  in  which  he  would  put  on  his  “Satanic” 
expression,  of  which  it  was  part  of  the  joke 
that  every  one  should  not  be  quite  in  the 
secret.  It  was  a wffiim  of  this  kind  which 
made  him  put  at  the  beginning  of  Romances 
sans  Paroles  that  very  criminal  image  of  a 
head  which  had  so  little  resemblance  with 
even  the  shape,  indeed  curious  enough,  of 
his  actual  head.  “Born  under  the  sign  of 
Saturn,”  as  he  no  doubt  was,  writh  that  “old 
prisoner’s  head”  of  which  he  tells  us,  it  was 
by  his  amazing  faculty  for  a simple  kind  of 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


209 


happiness  that  he  always  impressed  me.  I 
have  never  seen  so  cheerful  an  invalid  as  he 
used  to  be  at  that  hospital,  the  Hopital  Saint- 
Louis,  where  at  one  time  I used  to  go  and 
see  him  every  week.  His  whole  face  seemed 
to  chuckle  as  he  would  tell  me,  in  his  em- 
phatic, confiding  way,  everything  that  entered 
into  his  head;  the  droll  stories  cut  short  by 
a groan,  a lamentation,  a sudden  fury  of 
reminiscence,  at  which  his  face  would  cloud 
or  convulse,  the  wild  eyebrows  slanting  up 
and  down;  and  then,  suddenly,  the  good 
laugh  would  be  back,  clearing  the  air.  No 
one  was  ever  so  responsive  to  his  own  moods 
as  Verlaine,  and  with  him  every  mood  had 
the  vehemence  of  a passion.  Is  not  his 
whole  art  a delicate  waiting  upon  moods, 
with  that  perfect  confidence  in  them  as  they 
are,  which  it  is  a large  part  of  ordinary  edu- 
cation to  discourage  in  us,  and  a large  part 
of  experience  to  repress?  But  to  Verlaine, 
happily,  experience  taught  nothing;  or 
rather,  it  taught  him  only  to  cling  the  more 
closely  to  those  moods  in  whose  succession 
lies  the  more  intimate  part  of  our  spiritual 
life. 


210  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


It  is  no  doubt  well  for  society  that  man 
should  learn  by  experience;  for  the  artist 
the  benefit  is  doubtful.  The  artist,  it  cannot 
be  too  clearly  understood,  has  no  more  part 
in  society  than  a monk  in  domestic  life:  he 
cannot  be  judged  by  its  rules,  he  can  be 
neither  praised  not  blamed  for  his  acceptance 
or  rejection  of  its  conventions.  Social  rules 
are  made  by  normal  people  for  normal  peo- 
ple, and  the  man  of  genius  is  fundamentally 
abnormal.  It  is  the  poet  against  society, 
society  against  the  poet,  a direct  antagonism; 
the  shock  of  which,  however,  it  is  often 
possible  to  avoid  by  a compromise.  So  much 
licence  is  allowed  on  the  one  side,  so  much 
liberty  foregone  on  the  other.  The  conse- 
quences are  not  always  of  the  best,  art  being 
generally  the  loser.  But  there  are  certain 
natures  to  which  compromise  is  impossible; 
and  the  nature  of  Verlaine  was  one  of  these 
natures. 

“The  soul  of  an  immortal  child,”  says 
one  who  has  understood  him  better  than 
others,  Charles  Morice,  “that  is  the  soul 
of  Verlaine,  with  all  the  privileges  and  all 
the  perils  of  so  being;  with  the  sudden 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


211 


despair  so  easily  distracted,  the  vivid  gaieties 
without  a cause,  the  excessive  suspicions 
and  the  excessive  confidences,  the  whims  so 
easily  outwearied,  the  deaf  and  blind  infatua- 
tions, with,  especially,  the  unceasing  renewal 
of  impressions  in  the  incorruptible  integrity 
of  personal  vision  and  sensation.  Years,  in- 
fluences, teachings,  may  pass  over  a tem- 
perament such  as  this,  may  irritate  it,  may 
fatigue  it;  transform  it,  never — never  so 
much  as  to  alter  that  particular  unity  which 
consists  in  a dualism,  in  the  division  of  forces 
between  the  longing  after  what  is  evil  and 
the  adoration  of  what  is  good;  or  rather, 
in  the  antagonism  of  spirit  and  flesh.  Other 
men  ‘arrange’  their  lives,  take  sides,  follow 
one  direction;  Verlaine  hesitates  before  a 
choice,  which  seems  to  him  monstrous,  for, 
with  the  integral  naivete  of  irrefutable  human 
truth,  he  cannot  resign  himself,  however 
strong  may  be  the  doctrine,  however  enticing 
may  be  the  passion,  to  the  necessity  of  sac- 
rificing one  to  the  other,  and  from  one  to  the 
other  he  oscillates  without  a moment’s  re- 
pose.” 

It  is  in  such  a sense  as  this  that  Verlaine 


212  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


may  be  said  to  have  learnt  nothing  from 
experience,  in  the  sense  that  he  learnt  every- 
thing direct  from  life,  and  without  com- 
paring day  with  day.  That  the  exquisite 
artist  of  the  Fetes  Galantes  should  become 
the  great  poet  of  Sagesse,  it  was  needful  that 
things  should  have  happened  as  disastrously 
as  they  did:  the  marriage  with  the  girl- 
wife,  that  brief  idyl,  the  passion  for  drink, 
those  other  forbidden  passions,  vagabondage, 
an  attempted  crime,  the  eighteen  months  of 
prison,  conversion;  followed,  as  it  had  to  be, 
by  relapse,  bodily  sickness,  poverty,  beggary 
almost,  a lower  and  lower  descent  into  mean 
distresses.  It  was  needful  that  all  this  should 
happen,  in  order  that  the  spiritual  vision 
should  eclipse  the  material  vision;  but  it 
was  needful  that  all  this  should  happen  in 
vain,  so  far  as  the  conduct  of  life  was  con- 
cerned. Reflection,  in  Verlaine,  is  pure  waste; 
it  is  the  speech  of  the  soul  and  the  speech  of 
the  eyes,  that  we  must  listen  to  in  his  verse, 
never  the  speech  of  the  reason.  And  I call 
him  fortunate  because,  going  through  life  with 
a great  unconsciousness  of  what  most  men 
spend  their  lives  in  considering,  he  was  able 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


213 


to  abandon  himself  entirely  to  himself,  to  his 
unimpeded  vision,  to  his  unchecked  emotion, 
to  the  passionate  sincerity  which  in  him  was 
genius. 


2 

French  poetry,  before  Verlaine,  was  an 
admirable  vehicle  for  a really  fine,  a really 
poetical,  kind  of  rhetoric.  With  Victor  Hugo, 
for  the  first  time  since  Ronsard  (the  two  or 
three  masterpieces  of  Ronsard  and  his  com- 
panions) it  had  learnt  to  sing;  with  Baudelaire 
it  had  invented  a new  vocabulary  for  the 
expression  of  subtle,  often  perverse,  essen- 
tially modern  emotion  and  sensation.  But 
with  Victor  Hugo,  with  Baudelaire,  we  are 
still  under  the  dominion  of  rhetoric.  “Take 
eloquence,  and  wring  its  neck!”  said  Verlaine 
in  his  Art  Poetique;  and  he  showed,  by  writ- 
ing it,  that  French  verse  could  be  written 
without  rhetoric.  It  was  partly  from  his 
study  of  English  models  that  he  learnt  the 
secret  of  liberty  in  verse,  but  it  was  much 
more  a secret  found  by  the  way,  in  the  mere 
endeavour  to  be  absolutely  sincere,  to  express 
exactly  what  he  saw,  to  give  voice  to  his  own 


214  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


temperament,  in  which  intensity  of  feeling 
seemed  to  find  its  own  expression,  as  if  by 
accident.  L’art,  mes  enfants,  c’est  d’etre  ab- 
solument  soi-meme,  he  tells  us  in  one  of  his 
later  poems;  and,  with  such  a personality  as 
Verlaine’s  to  express,  wrhat  more  has  art  to 
do,  if  it  would  truly,  and  in  any  interesting 
manner,  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature? 

For,  consider  the  natural  qualities  which 
this  man  had  for  the  task  of  creating  a new 
poetry.  “Sincerity,  and  the  impression  of 
the  moment  followed  to  the  letter”:  that 
is  how  he  defined  his  theory  of  style,  in  an 
article  written  about  himself. 

Car  nous  voulons  la  nuance  encor, 

Pas  la  couleur,  rien  que  la  nuance! 

as  he  cries,  in  his  famous  Art  Poetique.  Take, 
then,  his  susceptibility  of  the  senses,  an  emo- 
tional susceptibility  not  less  delicate;  a life 
sufficiently  troubled  to  draw  out  every  emotion 
of  which  he  was  capable,  and,  with  it,  that 
absorption  in  the  moment,  that  inability  to 
look  before  or  after;  the  need  to  love  and 
the  need  to  confess,  each  a passion;  an  art 
of  painting  the  fine  shades  of  landscape,  of 
evoking  atmosphere,  which  can  be  compared 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


215 


only  with  the  art  of  Whistler;  a simplicity  of 
language  which  is  the  direct  outcome  of  a 
simplicity  of  temperament,  with  just  enough 
consciousness  of  itself  for  a final  elegance; 
and,  at  the  very  depth  of  his  being,  an  almost 
fierce  humility,  by  which  the  passion  of  love, 
after  searching  furiously  through  all  his  crea- 
tures, finds  God  by  the  way,  and  kneels  in 
the  dust  before  him.  Verlaine  was  never  a 
theorist:  he  left  theories  to  Mallarme.  He 
had  only  his  divination;  and  he  divined  that 
poetry,  always  desiring  that  miracles  should 
happen,  had  never  waited  patiently  enough 
upon  the  miracle.  It  was  by  that  proud  and 
humble  mysticism  of  his  temperament  that  he 
came  to  realise  how  much  could  be  done  by, 
in  a sense,  trying  to  do  nothing. 

And  then:  De  la  musique  avant  toute  chose; 
De  la  musique  encore  et  toujours!  There  are 
poems  of  Verlaine  which  go  as  far  as  verse  can 
go  to  become  pure  music,  the  voice  of  a bird 
with  a human  soul.  It  is  part  of  his  simplicity, 
his  divine  childishness,  that  he  abandons  him- 
self, at  times,  to  the  song  which  words  begin 
to  sing  in  the  air,  with  the  same  wise  confi- 
dence with  which  he  abandons  himself  to  the 


216  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


other  miracles  about  him.  He  knows  that 
words  are  living  things,  which  we  have  not 
created,  and  which  go  their  way  without  de- 
manding of  us  the  right  to  live.  He  knows 
that  words  are  suspicious,  not  without  their 
malice,  and  that  they  resist  mere  force  with 
the  impalpable  resistance  of  fire  or  water. 
They  are  to  be  caught  only  with  guile  or  with 
trust.  Verlaine  has  both,  and  words  become 
Ariel  to  him.  They  bring  him  not  only  that 
submission  of  the  slave  which  they  bring  to 
others,  but  all  the  soul,  and  in  a happy  bond- 
age. They  transform  themselves  for  him  into 
music,  colour,  and  shadow;  a disembodied 
music,  diaphanous  colours,  luminous  shadow. 
They  serve  him  with  so  absolute  a self-negation 
that  he  can  write  romances  sans  paroles,  songs 
almost  without  words,  in  which  scarcely  a 
sense  of  the  interference  of  human  speech 
remains.  The  ideal  of  lyric  poetry,  certainly, 
is  to  be  this  passive,  flawless  medium  for  the 
deeper  consciousness  of  things,  the  mysterious 
voice  of  that  mystery  which  lies  about  us,  out 
of  which  we  have  come,  and  into  which  we 
shall  return.  It  is  not  without  reason  that  we 
cannot  analyse  a perfect  lyric. 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


217 


With  Verlaine  the  sense  of  hearing  and  the 
sense  of  sight  are  almost  interchangeable: 
he  paints  with  sound,  and  his  line  and  atmos- 
phere become  music.  It  was  with  the  most 
precise  accuracy  that  Whistler  applied  the 
terms  of  music  to  his  painting,  for  painting, 
when  it  aims  at  being  the  vision  of  reality, 
pas  la  couleur,  rien  que  la  nuance,  passes 
almost  into  the  condition  of  music.  Verlaine’s 
landscape  painting  is  always  an  evocation,  in 
which  outline  is  lost  in  atmosphere. 

C’est  des  beaux  yeux  derriere  des  voiles, 

C’est  le  grand  jour  tremblant  de  midi, 

C’est,  par  un  ciel  d’automne  attiedi, 

Le  bleu  fouillis  des  claires  etoiles! 

He  was  a man,  certainly,  “for  whom  the 
visible  world  existed,”  but  for  whom  it  existed 
always  as  a vision.  He  absorbed  it  through 
all  his  senses,  as  the  true  mystic  absorbs  the 
divine  beauty.  And  so  he  created  in  verse  a 
new  voice  for  nature,  full  of  the  humble  ecstasy 
with  which  he  saw,  listened,  accepted. 

Cette  ikne  qui  se  lamente 
En  cette  plaine  dormante 
C’est  la  notre,  n’est-ce  pas? 

La  mienne,  dis,  et  la  tienne, 

Dont  s’exhale  l’humble  antienne 
Par  ce  tiede  soir,  tout  bas? 


218  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


And  with  the  same  attentive  simplicity 
with  which  he  found  words  for  the  sensations 
of  hearing  and  the  sensations  of  sight,  he 
found  words  for  the  sensations  of  the  soul, 
for  the  fine  shades  of  feeling.  From  the 
moment  wdien  his  inner  life  may  be  said  to 
have  begun,  he  was  occupied  with  the  task  of 
an  unceasing  confession,  in  which  one  seems 
to  overhear  him  talking  to  himself,  in  that 
vague,  preoccupied  way  which  he  often  had. 
Here  again  are  words  which  startle  one  by 
their  delicate  resemblance  to  thoughts,  by 
their  winged  flight  from  so  far,  by  their  alight- 
ing so  close.  ’The  verse  murmurs,  with  such 
an  ingenuous  confidence,  such  intimate  secrets. 
That  “setting  free”  of  verse,  wdiich  is  one  of 
the  achievements  of  Verlaine,  was  itself  mainly 
an  attempt  to  be  more  and  more  sincere,  a 
way  of  turning  poetic  artifice  to  new  account, 
by  getting  back  to  nature  itself,  hidden  away 
under  the  eloquent  rhetoric  of  Hugo,  Bau- 
delaire, and  the  Parnassians.  In  the  devo- 
tion of  rhetoric  to  either  beauty  or  truth,  there 
is  a certain  consciousness  of  an  audience,  of 
an  external  judgment:  rhetoric  would  con- 
vince, be  admired.  It  is  the  very  essence  of 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


219 


poetry  to  be  unconscious  of  anything  between 
its  own  moment  of  flight  and  the  supreme 
beauty  which  it  will  never  attain.  Verlaine 
taught  French  poetry  that  wise  and  subtle  un- 
consciousness. It  was  in  so  doing  that  he 
‘‘fused  his  personality,”  in  the  words  of  Ver- 
haeren,  “so  profoundly  with  beauty,  that  he 
left  upon  it  the  imprint  of  a new  and  hence- 
forth eternal  attitude.” 


3 

J'ai  la  fureur  d’ aimer,  says  Verlaine,  in  a 
passage  of  very  personal  significance. 

J’ai  la  fureur  d’airaer.  Mon  coeur  si  faible  est  fou. 
N’importe  quand,  n’importe  quel  et  n’importe  oil, 

Qu’un  6clair  de  beaute,  de  vertu,  de  vaillance, 

Luise,  il  s’y  priicipite,  il  y vole,  il  y lance, 

Et,  le  temps  d’une  etreinte,  il  embrasse  cent  fois 
L’etre  ou  l’objet  qu’il  a poursuivi  de  son  choix; 

Puis,  quand  l’illusion  a replie  son  aile, 

Il  revient  triste  et  seul  bien  souvent,  mais  fidele, 

Et  laissant  aux  ingrats  quelque  chose  de  lui, 

Sang  ou  chair  .... 

J’ai  la  fureur  d’aimer.  Qu’y  faire?  Ah,  laissez  faire! 

And  certainly  this  admirable,  and  supremely 
dangerous,  quality  was  at  the  root  of  Verlaine’s 
nature.  Instinctive,  unreasoning  as  he  was, 


220  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


entirely  at  the  mercy  of  the  emotion  or  im- 
pression which,  for  the  moment,  had  seized 
upon  him,  it  was  inevitable  that  he  should  be 
completely  at  the  mercy  of  the  most  imperious 
of  instincts,  of  passions,  and  of  intoxications. 
And  he  had  the  simple  and  ardent  nature,  in 
this  again  consistently  childlike,  to  which  love, 
some  kind  of  affection,  given  or  returned,  is 
not  the  luxury,  the  exception,  which  it  is  to 
many  natures,  but  a daily  necessity.  To  such 
a temperament  there  may  or  may  not  be  the 
one  great  passion ; there  will  certainly  be  many 
passions.  And  in  Verlaine  I find  that  single, 
childlike  necessity  of  loving  and  being  loved, 
all  through  his  life  and  on  every  page  of  his 
works;  I find  it,  unchanged  in  essence,  but 
constantly  changing  form,  in  his  chaste  and 
unchaste  devotions  to  women,  in  his  passionate 
friendships  with  men,  in  his  supreme  mystical 
adoration  of  God. 

To  turn  from  La  Bonne  Chanson,  written 
for  a wedding  present  to  a young  wife,  to 
Chansons  pour  Elle,  written  more  than  twenty 
years  later,  in  dubious  honour  of  a middle- 
aged  mistress,  is  to  travel  a long  road,  the  hard, 
long  road  which  Verlaine  had  travelled  during 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


221 


those  years.  His  life  was  ruinous,  a disaster, 
more  sordid  perhaps  than  the  life  of  any  other 
poet;  and  he  could  write  of  it,  from  a hospital- 
bed,  with  this  quite  sufficient  sense  of  its 
deprivations.  “But  all  the  same,  it  is  hard,” 
he  laments,  in  Mes  Hopitaux,  “after  a life  of 
work,  set  off,  I admit,  with  accidents  in  which 
I have  had  a large  share,  catastrophes  perhaps 
vaguely  premeditated — it  is  hard,  I say,  at 
forty-seven  years  of  age,  in  full  possession  of 
all  the  reputation  (of  the  success , to  use  the 
frightful  current  phrase)  to  which  my  highest 
ambitions  could  aspire — hard,  hard,  hard  in- 
deed, worse  than  hard,  to  find  myself — good 
God! — to  find  myself  on  the  streets,  and  to  have 
nowhere  to  lay  my  head  and  support  an  ageing 
body  save  the  pillows  and  the  menus  of  a public 
charity,  even  now  uncertain,  and  which  might 
at  any  moment  be  withdrawn — God  forbid! — 
without,  apparently,  the  fault  of  any  one,  oh! 
not  even,  and  above  all,  not  mine.”  Yet, 
after  all,  these  sordid  miseries,  this  poor  man’s 
vagabondage,  all  the  misfortunes  of  one  cer- 
tainly “irreclaimable,”  on  which  so  much 
stress  has  been  laid,  alike  by  friends  and  by 
foes,  are  externalities;  they  are  not  the  man; 


222  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


the  man,  the  eternal  lover,  passionate  and 
humble,  remains  unchanged,  while  only  his 
shadow  wanders,  from  morning  to  night  of  the 
long  day. 

The  poems  to  Rimbaud,  to  Lucien  L6tinois, 
to  others,  the  whole  volume  of  Dedicaces, 
cover  perhaps  as  wide  a range  of  sentiment 
as  La  Bonne  Chanson  and  Chansons  pour  Elle. 
The  poetry  of  friendship  has  never  been  sung 
with  such  plaintive  sincerity,  such  simple 
human  feeling,  as  in  some  of  these  poems, 
which  can  only  be  compared,  in  modern  poetry, 
with  a poem  for  which  Verlaine  had  a great 
admiration,  Tennyson’s  In  Memoriam.  Only 
with  Verlaine,  the  thing  itself,  the  affection  or 
the  regret,  is  everything;  there  is  no  room  for 
meditation  over  destiny,  or  search  for  a prob- 
lematical consolation.  Other  poems  speak  a 
more  difficult  language,  in  which,  doubtless, 
V ennui  di  vivre  avec  les  gens  et  dans  les  choses 
counts  for  much,  and  la  fureur  d’aimer  for 
more. 

In  spite  of  the  general  impression  to  the 
contrary,  an  impression  which  by  no  means 
displeased  him  himself,  I must  contend  that 
the  sensuality  of  Verlaine,  brutal  as  it  could 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


223 


sometimes  be,  was  after  all  simple  rather  than 
complicated,  instinctive  rather  than  perverse. 
In  the  poetry  of  Baudelaire,  with  which  the 
poetry  of  Verlaine  is  so  often  compared,  there 
is  a deliberate  science  of  sensual  perversity 
which  has  something  almost  monachal  in  its 
accentuation  of  vice  with  horror,  in  its  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  passions.  Baudelaire  brings 
every  complication  of  taste,  the  exasperation  of 
perfumes,  the  irritant  of  cruelty,  the  very 
odours  and  colours  of  corruption,  to  the  cre- 
ation and  adornment  of  a sort  of  religion,  in 
which  an  eternal  mass  is  served  before  a veiled 
altar.  There  is  no  confession,  no  absolution, 
not  a prayer  is  permitted  which  is  not  set  down 
in  the  ritual.  With  Verlaine,  however  often 
love  may  pass  into  sensuality,  to  whatever 
length  sensuality  may  be  hurried,  sensuality 
is  never  more  than  the  malady  of  love.  It 
is  love  desiring  the  absolute,  seeking  in  vain, 
seeking  always,  and,  finally,  out  of  the  depths, 
finding  God. 

Verlaine’s  conversion  took  place  while  he 
was  in  prison,  during  those  solitary  eighteen 
months  in  company  with  his  thoughts,  that 
enforced  physical  inactivity,  which  could  but 


224  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


concentrate  his  whole  energy  on  the  only 
kind  of  sensation  then  within  his  capacity,  the 
sensations  of  the  soul  and  of  the  conscience. 
With  that  promptitude  of  abandonment  which 
was  his  genius,  he  grasped  feverishly  at  the 
succour  of  God  and  the  Church,  he  abased 
himself  before  the  immaculate  purity  of  the 
Virgin.  He  had  not,  like  others  who  have 
risen  from  the  same  depths  to  the  same  height 
of  humiliation,  to  despoil  his  nature  of  its  pride, 
to  conquer  his  intellect,  before  he  could  become 
l ’enfant  vetu  de  laine  et  d'innocence.  All  that 
was  simple,  humble,  childlike  in  him  accepted 
that  humiliation  with  the  loving  child’s  joy  in 
penitence;  all  that  was  ardent,  impulsive,  in- 
domitable in  him  burst  at  once  into  a flame  of 
adoration. 

He  realised  the  great  secret  of  the  Christian 
mystics:  that  it  is  possible  to  love  God  with 
an  extravagance  of  the  whole  being,  to  which 
the  love  of  the  creature  cannot  attain.  All 
love  is  an  attempt  to  break  through  the 
loneliness  of  individuality,  to  fuse  oneself 
with  something  not  oneself,  to  give  and  to 
receive,  in  all  the  warmth  of  natural  desire, 
that  inmost  element  which  remains,  so  cold 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


225 


and  so  invincible,  in  the  midst  of  the  soul. 
It  is  a desire  of  the  infinite  in  humanity,  and, 
as  humanity  has  its  limits,  it  can  but  return 
sadly  upon  itself  when  that  limit  is  reached. 
Thus  human  love  is  not  only  an  ecstasy  but 
a despair,  and  the  more  profound  a despair 
the  more  ardently  it  is  returned. 

But  the  love  of  God,  considered  only  from 
its  human  aspect,  contains  at  least  the  illusion 
of  infinity.  To  love  God  is  to  love  the  ab- 
solute, so  far  as  the  mind  of  man  can  con- 
ceive the  absolute,  and  thus,  in  a sense,  to 
love  God  is  to  possess  the  absolute,  for  love 
has  already  possessed  that  which  it  appre- 
hends. What  the  earthly  lover  realises  to 
himself  as  the  image  of  his  beloved  is,  after 
all,  his  own  vision  of  love,  not  her.  God  must 
remain  deus  absconditus,  even  to  love;  but  the 
lover,  incapable  of  possessing  infinity,  will  have 
possessed  all  of  infinity  of  which  he  is  capable. 
And  his  ecstasy  will  be  flawless.  The  human 
mind,  meditating  on  infinity,  can  but  discover 
perfection  beyond  perfection;  for  it  is  im- 
possible to  conceive  of  limitation  in  any 
aspect  of  that  which  has  once  been  conceived 
as  infinite.  In  place  of  that  deception  which 


i 


226  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


comes  from  the  shock  of  a boundary-line 
beyond  which  humanity  cannot  conceive  of 
humanity,  there  is  only  a divine  rage  against 
the  limits  of  human  perception,  which  by 
their  own  failure  seem  at  last  to  limit  for  us 
the  infinite  itself.  For  once,  love  finds  itself 
bounded  only  by  its  own  capacity;  so  far 
does  the  love  of  God  exceed  the  love  of  the 
creature,  and  so  far  would  it  exceed  that  love 
if  God  did  not  exist. 

But  if  He  does  exist!  if,  outside  humanity, 
a conscient,  eternal  perfection,  who  has  made 
the  world  in  his  image,  loves  the  humanity 
He  has  made,  and  demands  love  in  return! 
If  the  spirit  of  his  love  is  as  a breath  over 
the  world,  suggesting,  strengthening,  the  love 
which  it  desires,  seeking  man  that  man  may 
seek  God,  itself  the  impulse  which  it  humbles 
itself  to  accept  at  man’s  hands;  if  indeed, 

Mon  Dieu  m’a  dit:  mon  fils,  il  faut  m'aimer; 

how  much  more  is  this  love  of  God,  in  its 
inconceivable  acceptance  and  exchange,  the 
most  divine,  the  only  unending  intoxication, 
in  the  world!  Well,  it  is  this  realised  sense 
of  communion,  point  by  point  realised,  and 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


227 


put  into  words,  more  simple,  more  human, 
more  instinctive  than  any  poet  since  the 
mediaeval  mystics  has  found  for  the  delights 
of  this  intercourse,  that  we  find  in  Sagesse , 
and  in  the  other  religious  poems  of  Ver- 
laine. 

But,  with  Verlaine,  the  love  of  God  is  not 
merely  a rapture,  it  is  a thanksgiving  for 
forgiveness.  Lying  in  wait  behind  all  the 
fair  appearances  of  the  world,  he  remembers 
the  old  enemy,  the  flesh;  and  the  sense  of 
sin  (that  strange  paradox  of  the  reason)  is 
childishly  strong  in  him.  He  laments  his 
offence,  he  sees  not  only  the  love  but  the 
justice  of  God,  and  it  seems  to  him,  as  in 
a picture,  that  the  little  hands  of  the  Virgin 
are  clasped  in  petition  for  him.  Verlaine’s 
religion  is  the  religion  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Je  suis  catholique,  he  said  to  me,  mais  . . . 
catholique  du  moyen-dge ! He  might  have 
written  the  ballad  which  Villon  made  for  his 
mother,  and  with  the  same  visual  sense  of 
heaven  and  hell.  Like  a child,  he  tells  his 
sins  over,  promises  that  he  has  put  them 
behind  him,  and  finds  such  naive,  human 
words  to  express  his  gratitude.  The  Virgin 


228  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


is  really,  to  him,  mother  and  friend;  he 
delights  in  the  simple,  peasant  humanity, 
still  visible  in  her  who  is  also  the  Mys- 
tical Rose,  the  Tower  of  Ivory,  the  Gate  of 
Heaven,  and  who  now  extends  her  hands, 
in  the  gesture  of  pardon,  from  a throne  only 
just  lower  than  the  throne  of  God. 

4 

Experience,  I have  said,  taught  Verlaine 
nothing;  religion  had  no  more  stable  influence 
upon  his  conduct  then  experience.  In  that 
apology  for  himself  which  he  wrote  under 
the  anagram  of  “ Pauvre  Lelian,”  he  has 
stated  the  case  with  his  usual  sincerity.  “I 
believe,”  he  says,  “and  I sin  in  thought  as 
in  action;  I believe,  and  I repent  in  thought, 
if  no  more.  Or  again,  I believe,  and  I am 
a good  Christian  at  this  moment;  I believe, 
and  I am  a bad  Christian  the  instant  after. 
The  remembrance,  the  hope,  the  invocation  of 
a sin  delights  me,  with  or  without  remorse, 
sometimes  under  the  very  form  of  sin,  and 
hedged  with  all  its  natural  consequences; 
more  often — so  strong,  so  natural  and  animal, 


PAUL  VERLAINE 


229 


are  flesh  and  blood — just  in  the  same  manner 
as  the  remembrances,  hopes,  invocations  of 
any  carnal  freethinker.  This  delight,  I,  you, 
some  one  else,  writers,  it  pleases  us  to  put  to 
paper  and  publish  more  or  less  well  expressed: 
we  consign  it,  in  short,  into  literary  form, 
forgetting  all  religious  ideas,  or  not  letting 
one  of  them  escape  us.  Can  any  one  in  good 
faith  condemn  us  as  poet?  A hundred  times 
no.”  And,  indeed,  I would  echo,  a hundred 
times  no!  It  is  just  this  apparent  complica- 
tion of  what  is  really  a great  simplicity  which 
gives  its  singular  value  to  the  poetry  of 
Verlaine,  permitting  it  to  sum  up  in  itself 
the  whole  paradox  of  humanity,  and  especi- 
ally the  weak,  passionate,  uncertain,  troubled 
century  to  which  we  belong,  in  which  so 
many  doubts,  negations,  and  distresses  seem, 
now  more  than  ever,  to  be  struggling  towards 
at  least  an  ideal  of  spiritual  consolation. 
Verlaine  is  the  poet  of  these  weaknesses 
and  of  that  ideal. 

[See  also  account  given  in  “ Bibliography  and  Notes,”  page 
351.] 


x 


I.  JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


The  novels  of  Huysmans,  however  we  may 
regard  them  as  novels,  are,  at  all  events,  the 
sincere  and  complete  expression  of  a very 
remarkable  personality.  From  Marthe  to  La- 
Bas  every  story,  every  volume,  disengages 
the  same  atmosphere — the  atmosphere  of  a 
London  November,  when  mere  existence  is  a 
sufficient  burden,  and  the  little  miseries  of  life 
loom  up  through  the  fog  into  a vague  and 
formidable  grotesqueness.  Here,  for  once,  is 
a pessimist  whose  philosophy  is  mere  sensa- 
tion—and  sensation,  after  all,  is  the  one  cer- 
tainty in  a world  which  may  be  well  or  ill 
arranged,  for  ultimate  purposes,  but  which  is 
certainly,  for  each  of  us,  what  each  of  us  feels 
it  to  be.  To  Huysmans  the  world  appears 
to  be  a profoundly  uncomfortable,  unpleas- 
ant, ridiculous  place,  with  a certain  solace  in 
various  forms  of  art,  and  certain  possibilities 
of  at  least  temporary  escape.  Part  of  his 
work  presents  to  us  a picture  of  ordinary  life 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


231 


as  he  conceives  it,  in  its  uniform  trivial 
wretchedness;  in  another  part  he  has  made 
experiment  in  directions  which  have  seemed 
to  promise  escape,  relief;  in  yet  other  por- 
tions he  has  allowed  himself  the  delight  of 
his  sole  enthusiasm,  the  enthusiasm  of  art. 
He  himself  would  be  the  first  to  acknowl- 
edge— indeed,  practically,  he  has  acknowledged 
that  the  particular  way  in  which  he  sees 
life  is  a matter  of  personal  temperament 
and  constitution,  a matter  of  nerves.  The 
Goncourts  have  never  tired  of  insisting  on 
the  fact  of  their  nevrose,  of  pointing  out  its 
importance  in  connection  with  the  form  and 
structure  of  their  work,  their  touch  on  style, 
even.  To  them  the  maladie  jin  de  siecle  has 
come  delicately,  as  to  the  chlorotic  fine 
ladies  of  the  Faubourg  Saint-Germain:  it 
has  sharpened  their  senses  to  a point  of  morbid 
acuteness,  it  has  given  their  work  a certain 
feverish  beauty.  To  Huysmans  it  has  given 
the  exaggerated  horror  of  whatever  is  ugly 
and  unpleasant,  with  the  fatal  instinct  of 
discovering,  the  fatal  necessity  of  contemplat- 
ing, every  flaw  and  every  discomfort  that  a 
somewhat  imperfect  world  can  offer  for  in- 


232  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


spection.  It  is  the  transposition  of  the  ideal. 
Relative  values  are  lost,  for  it  is  the  sense  of  the 
disagreeable  only  that  is  heightened;  and 
the  world,  in  this  strange  disorder  of  vision, 
assumes  an  aspect  which  can  only  be  com- 
pared with  that  of  a drop  of  impure  water 
under  the  microscope.  “Nature  seen  through 
a temperament”  is  Zola’s  definition  of  all 
art.  Nothing,  certainly,  could  be  more  exact 
and  expressive  as  a definition  of  the  art  of 
Huysmans. 

To  realise  how  faithfully  and  how  com- 
pletely Huysmans  has  revealed  himself  in  all 
he  has  written,  it  is  necessary  to  know  the 
man.  “He  gave  me  the  impression  of  a 
cat,”  some  interviewer  once  wrote  of  him; 
“courteous,  perfectly  polite,  almost  amiable, 
but  all  nerves,  ready  to  shoot  out  his  claws 
at  the  least  word.”  And  indeed,  there  is 
something  of  his  favourite  animal  about 
him.  The  face  is  grey,  wearily  alert,  with 
a look  of  benevolent  malice.  At  first  sight 
it  is  commonplace,  the  features  are  ordinary, 
one  seems  to  have  seen  it  at  the  Bourse  or 
the  Stock  Exchange.  But  gradually  that 
strange,  unvarying  expression,  that  look  of 


JORIS-KARL  MUYSMANS 


233 


benevolent  malice,  grows  upon  you  as  the 
influence  of  the  man  makes  itself  felt.  I 
have  seen  Huysmans  in  his  office — he  is  an 
employe  in  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
and  a model  employe;  I have  seen  him  in  a 
cafe,  in  various  houses;  but  I always  see 
him  in  memory  as  I used  to  see  him  at  the 
house  of  the  bizarre  Madame  X.  He  leans 
back  on  the  sofa,  rolling  a cigarette  between 
his  thin,  expressive  fingers,  looking  at  no 
one  and  at  nothing,  while  Madame  X moves 
about  with  solid  vivacity  in  the  midst  of 
her  extraordinary  menagerie  of  bric-a-brac. 
The  spoils  of  all  the  world  are  there,  in  that 
incredibly  tiny  salon;  they  lie  underfoot, 
they  climb  up  walls,  they  cling  to  screens, 
brackets,  and  tables;  one  of  your  elbows 
menaces  a Japanese  toy,  the  other  a Dresden 
china  shepherdess;  all  the  colours  of  the 
rainbow  clash  in  a barbaric  discord  of  notes. 
And  in  a corner  of  this  fantastic  room, 
Huysmans  lies  back  indifferently  on  the 
sofa,  with  the  air  of  one  perfectly  resigned 
to  the  boredom  of  life.  Something  is  said 
by  my  learned  friend  who  is  to  write  for  the 
new  periodical,  or  perhaps  it  is  the  young 


234  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


editor  of  the  new  periodical  who  speaks,  or 
(if  that  were  not  impossible)  the  taciturn 
Englishman  who  accompanies  me;  and  Huys- 
mans,  without  looking  up,  and  without  tak- 
ing the  trouble  to  speak  very  distinctly, 
picks  up  the  phrase,  transforms  it,  more 
likely  transpierces  it,  in  a perfectly  turned 
sentence,  a phrase  of  impromptu  elabora- 
tion. Perhaps  it  is  only  a stupid  book  that 
some  one  has  mentioned,  or  a stupid  woman; 
as  he  speaks,  the  book  looms  up  before  one, 
becomes  monstrous  in  its  dulness,  a master- 
piece and  miracle  of  imbecility;  the  unim- 
portant little  woman  grows  into  a slow  horror 
before  your  eyes.  It  is  always  the  unpleasant 
aspect  of  things  that  he  seizes,  but  the  inten- 
sity of  his  revolt  from  that  unpleasantness 
brings  a touch  of  the  sublime  into  the  very 
expression  of  his  disgust.  Every  sentence  is 
an  epigram,  and  every  epigram  slaughters  a 
reputation  or  an  idea.  He  speaks  with  an 
accent  as  of  pained  surprise,  an  amused  look 
of  contempt,  so  profound  that  it  becomes 
almost  pity,  for  human  inbecility. 

Yes,  that  is  the  true  Huysmans,  the  Huys- 
mans  of  A Rebours,  and  it  is  just  such  sur- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


235 


roundings  that  seem  to  bring  out  his  peculiar 
quality.  With  this  contempt  for  humanity, 
this  hatred  of  mediocrity,  this  passion  for  a 
somewhat  exotic  kind  of  modernity,  an  artist 
who  is  so  exclusively  an  artist  was  sure,  one 
day  or  another,  to  produce  a work  which, 
being  produced  to  please  himself,  and  being 
entirely  typical  of  himself,  would  be,  in  a 
way,  the  quintessence  of  contemporary  De- 
cadence. And  it  is  precisely  such  a book  that 
Huysmans  has  written,  in  the  extravagant, 
astonishing  A Rebours.  All  his  other  books 
are  a sort  of  unconscious  preparation  for  this 
one  book,  a sort  of  inevitable  and  scarcely 
necessary  sequel  to  it.  They  range  them- 
selves along  the  line  of  a somewhat  erratic 
development,  from  Baudelaire,  through  Gon- 
court,  by  way  of  Zola,  to  the  surprising 
originality  of  so  disconcerting  an  exception  to 
any  and  every  order  of  things. 

The  descendant  of  a long  line  of  Dutch 
painters — one  of  whom,  Cornelius  Huysmans, 
has  a certain  fame  among  the  lesser  land- 
scape men  of  the  great  period— Joris-Karl 
Huysmans  was  born  at  Paris,  February  5, 
1848.  His  first  book,  Le  Drageoir  a Epices, 


236  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


published  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  is  a 
pasticcio  of  prose  poems,  done  after  Baude- 
laire, of  little  sketches,  done  after  Dutch 
artists,  together  writh  a few  studies  of 
Parisian  landscape,  done  after  nature.  It 
shows  us  the  careful,  laboured  work  of  a 
really  artistic  temperament;  it  betrays  here 
and  there,  the  spirit  of  acrimonious  observa- 
tion which  is  to  count  for  so  much  with 
Huysmans — in  the  crude  malice  of  L’Extase, 
for  example,  in  the  notation  of  the  “rich- 
ness of  tone,”  the  “superb  colouring,”  of  an 
old  drunkard.  And  one  sees  already  some- 
thing of  the  novelty  and  the  precision  of  his 
description,  the  novelty  and  the  unpleasant- 
ness of  the  subjects  which  he  chooses  to 
describe,  in  this  vividly  exact  picture  of  the 
carcass  of  a cow  hung  up  outside  a butcher’s 
shop:  “As  in  a hothouse,  a marvellous  vege- 
tation flourished  in  the  carcass.  Veins  shot 
out  on  every  side  like  trails  of  bind-weed; 
dishevelled  branch-work  extended  itself  along 
the  body,  an  efflorescence  of  entrails  unfurled 
their  violet-tinted  corollas,  and  big  clusters 
of  fat  stood  out,  a sharp  white,  against  the 
red  medley  of  quivering  flesh.” 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


237 


In  Marthe:  histoire  d’une  fille,  which  fol- 
lowed in  1876,  two  years  later,  Huysmans  is 
almost  as  far  from  actual  achievement  as 
in  Le  Drageoir  a Epices,  but  the  book,  in  its 
crude  attempt  to  deal  realistically,  and  some- 
what after  the  manner  of  Goncourt,  with  the 
life  of  a prostitute  of  the  lowest  depths,  marks 
a considerable  advance  upon  the  somewhat 
casual  experiments  of  his  earlier  manner.  It  is 
important  to  remember  that  Marthe  preceded 
La  Fille  Elisa  and  Nana.  “ I write  what  I see, 
what  I feel,  and  what  I have  experienced,” 
says  the  brief  and  defiant  preface,  “and  I 
write  it  as  well  as  I can : . that  is  all.  This  ex- 
planation is  not  an  excuse,  it  is  simply  the 
statement  of  the  aim  that  I pursue  in  art.” 
Explanation  or  excuse  notwithstanding,  the 
book  was  forbidden  to  be  sold  in  France.  It  is 
Naturalism  in  its  earliest  and  most  pitiless 
stage — Naturalism  which  commits  the  error 
of  evoking  no  sort  of  interest  in  this  unhappy 
creature  who  rises  a little  from  her  native  gut- 
ter, only  to  fall  back  more  woefully  into  the 
gutter  again.  Goncourt’s  Elisa  at  least  in- 
terests us;  Zola’s  Nana  at  all  events  appeals 
to  our  senses.  But  Marthe  is  a mere  docu- 


238  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


ment,  like  her  story.  Notes  have  been  taken — 
no  doubt  sur  le  vif — they  have  been  strung  to- 
gether, and  here  they  are  with  only  an  interest- 
ing brutality,  a curious  sordidness  to  note,  in 
these  descriptions  that  do  duty  for  psychology 
and  incident  alike,  in  the  general  flatness  of 
character,  the  general  dislocation  of  episode. 

Les  Sceurs  Vatard,  published  in  1879,  and 
the  short  story  Sac  au  Dos,  which  appeared 
in  1880  in  the  famous  Zolaist  manifesto,  Les 
Soirees  de  Medan,  show  the  influence  of  Les 
Rougon-Macquart  rather  than  of  Germinie 
Lacerteux.  For  the  time  the  “formula”  of 
Zola  has  been  accepted:  the  result  is,  a re- 
markable piece  of  work,  but  a story  without  a 
story,  a frame  without  a picture.  With  Zola, 
there  is  at  all  events  a beginning  and  an  end, 
a chain  of  events,  a play  of  character  upon 
incident.  But  in  Les  Sceurs  Vatard  there  is 
no  reason  for  the  narrative  ever  beginning  or 
ending;  there  are  miracles  of  description — the 
workroom,  the  rue  de  Sevres,  the  locomotives, 
the  Foire  du  pain  d’6pice — which  lead  to  noth- 
ing; there  are  interiors,  there  are  interviews, 
there  are  the  two  work-girls,  Celine  and  De- 
siree, and  their  lovers;  there  is  what  Zola  him- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


239 


self  described  as  tout  ce  milieu  ouvrier,  ce  coin 
de  misere  et  d’ ignorance,  de  tranquille  ordure  et 
d’air  naturellement  empeste.  And  with  it  all 
there  is  a heavy  sense  of  stagnancy,  a dreary 
lifelessness.  All  that  is  good  in  the  book  reap- 
pears, in  vastly  better  company,  in  En  Menage 
(1881),  a novel  which  is,  perhaps,  more  in  the 
direct  line  of  heritage  from  U Education  Senti- 
mentale — the  starting-point  of  the  Naturalistic 
novel — than  any  other  novel  of  the  Naturalists. 

En  Menage  is  the  story  of  “Monsieur  Tout - 
le-monde,  an  insignificant  personality,  one  of 
those  poor  creatures  who  have  not  even  the 
supreme  consolation  of  being  able  to  complain 
of  any  injustice  in  their  fate,  for  an  injustice 
supposes  at  all  events  a misunderstood  merit, 
a force.”  Andreis  the  reduction  to  the  bour- 
geois formula  of  the  invariable  hero  of  Huys- 
mans.  He  is  just  enough  removed  from  the 
commonplace  to  suffer  from  it  with  acuteness. 
He  cannot  get  on  either  with  or  without  a 
woman  in  his  establishment.  Betrayed  by  his 
wife,  he  consoles  himself  with  a mistress,  and 
finally  goes  back  to  the  wife.  And  the  moral 
of  it  all  is:  “Let  us  be  stupidly  comfortable,  if 
we  can,  in  any  way  we  can:  but  it  is  almost 


240  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


certain  that  we  cannot.”  In  A Vau-l’Eau,  a 
less  interesting  story  which  followed  En  Me- 
nage, the  daily  misery  of  the  respectable  M. 
Folantin,  the  government  employe,  consists 
in  the  impossible  search  for  a decent  restau- 
rant, a satisfactory  dinner:  for  M.  Folantin, 
too,  there  is  only  the  same  counsel  of  a desper- 
ate, an  inevitable  resignation.  Never  has  the 
intolerable  monotony  of  small  inconveniences 
been  so  scrupulously,  so  unsparingly  chron- 
icled, as  in  these  two  studies  in  the  heroic 
degree  of  the  commonplace.  It  happens  to 
Andre,  at  a certain  epoch  in  his  life,  to  take 
back  an  old  servant  who  had  left  him  many 
years  before.  He  finds  that  she  has  exactly 
the  same  defects  as  before,  and  “to  find  them 
there  again,”  comments  the  author,  “did  not 
displease  him.  He  had  been  expecting  them 
all  the  time,  he  saluted  them  as  old  acquaint- 
ances, yet  with  a certain  surprise,  notwith- 
standing, to  see  them  neither  grown  nor  dimin- 
ished. He  noted  for  himself  with  satisfaction 
that  the  stupidity  of  his  servant  had  remained 
stationary.”  On  another  page,  referring  to 
the  inventor  of  cards,  Huj^smans  defines  him 
as  one  who  “did  something  towards  suppressing 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


241 


the  free  exchange  of  human  imbecility.”  Hav- 
ing to  say  in  passing  that  a girl  has  returned 
from  a ball,  “she  was  at  home  again,”  he  ob- 
serves, “after  the  half-dried  sweat  of  the 
waltzes.”  In  this  invariably  sarcastic  turn  of 
the  phrase,  this  absoluteness  of  contempt,  this 
insistence  on  the  disagreeable,  we  find  the  note 
of  Huysmans,  particularly  at  this  point  in  his 
career,  when,  like  Flaubert,  he  forced  himself 
to  contemplate  and  to  analyse  the  more  medi- 
ocre manifestations  of  la  betise  humaine. 

There  is  a certain  perversity  in  this  furious 
contemplation  of  stupidity,  this  fanatical  in- 
sistence on  the  exasperating  attraction  of  the 
sordid  and  the  disagreeable;  and  it  is  by  such 
stages  that  we  come  to  A Reborns.  But  on  the 
way  we  have  to  note  a volume  of  Croquis 
Parisiens  (1880),  in  which  the  virtuoso  who  is 
a part  of  the  artist  in  Huysmans  has  executed 
some  of  his  most  astonishing  feats;  and  a 
volume  on  L’Art  Moderne  (1883),  in  which  the 
most  modern  of  artists  in  literature  has  ap- 
plied himself  to  the  criticism — the  revelation, 
rather — of  modernity  in  art.  In  the  latter, 
Huysmans  was  the  first  to  declare  the  suprem- 
acy of  Degas — “the  greatest  artist  that  we 


242  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


possess  to-day  in  France” — while  announcing 
with  no  less  fervour  the  remote,  reactionary, 
and  intricate  genius  of  Gustave  Moreau.  He 
was  the  first  to  discover  Raffaelli,  “the  painter 
of  poor  people  and  the  open  sky — a sort  of 
Parisian  Millet,”  as  he  called  him;  the  first  to 
discover  Forain,  “le  veritable  peintre  de  la 
fille”;  the  first  to  discover  Odilon  Redon,  to 
do  justice  to  Pissaro  and  Paul  Gauguin.  No 
literary  artist  since  Baudelaire  has  made  so 
valuable  a contribution  to  art  criticism,  and 
the  Curiosites  Esthetiques  are,  after  all,  less 
exact  in  their  actual  study,  less  revolutionary, 
and  less  really  significant  in  their  critical  judg- 
ments, than  L’Art  Moderne.  The  Croquis 
Parisiens,  which,  in  its  first  edition,  was  illus- 
trated by  etchings  of  Forain  and  Raffaelli,  is 
simply  the  attempt  to  do  in  words  what  those 
artists  have  done  in  aquafortis  or  in  pastel. 
There  are  the  same  Parisian  types — the  omni- 
bus-conductor,  the  washerwoman,  the  man  who 
sells  hot  chestnuts — the  same  impressions  of  a 
sick  and  sorry  landscape,  La  Bievre,  for  prefer- 
ence, in  all  its  desolate  and  lamentable  attrac- 
tion; there  is  a marvellously  minute  series  of 
studies  of  that  typically  Parisian  music-hall, 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


243 


the  Folies-Bergere.  Huysmans’  faculty  of  de- 
scription is  here  seen  at  its  fullest  stretch  of 
agility;  precise,  suggestive,  with  all  the  outline 
and  colour  of  actual  brush-work,  it  might  even 
be  compared  with  the  art  of  Degas,  only  there 
is  just  that  last  touch  wanting,  that  breath  of 
palpitating  life,  which  is  what  we  always  get 
in  Degas,  what  we  never  get  in  Huysmans. 

In  L’Art  Moderne,  speaking  of  the  water- 
colours of  Forain,  Huysmans  attributes  to 
them  “a  specious  and  cherche  art,  demanding, 
for  its  appreciation,  a certain  initiation,  a 
certain  special  sense.”  To  realise  the  full  value, 
the  real  charm,  of  A Rebours,  some  such  initia- 
tion might  be  deemed  necessary.  In  its  fan- 
tastic unreality,  its  exquisite  artificiality,  it  is 
the  natural  sequel  of  En  Menage  and  A Vau- 
VEau,  which  are  so  much  more  acutely  sordid 
than  the  most  sordid  kind  of  real  life;  it  is  the 
logical  outcome  of  that  hatred  and  horror  of 
human  mediocrity,  of  the  mediocrity  of  daily 
existence,  which  we  have  seen  to  be  the  special 
form  of  Huysmans’  nevrose.  The  motto,  taken 
from  a thirteenth-century  mystic,  Rusbroeck 
the  Admirable,  is  a cry  for  escape,  for  the 
“something  in  the  world  that  is  there  in  no 


244  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


satisfying  measure,  or  not  at  all”:  11  faut  que 
je  me  rejouisse  au-dessus  du  tem-ps  . . . quoique 
le  monde  ait  horreur  de  ma  joie  et  que  sa  grossi- 
erete  ne  sache  pas  ce  que  je  veux  dire.  And  the 
book  is  the  history  of  a Thebaide  raffinee — a 
voluntary  exile  from  the  world  in  a new  kind 
of  “Palace  of  Art.”  Des  Esseintes,  the  vague 
but  typical  hero,  is  one  of  those  half-patho- 
logical cases  which  help  us  to  understand  the 
full  meaning  of  the  word  decadence,  which  they 
partly  represent.  The  last  descendant  of  an 
ancient  family,  his  impoverished  blood  tainted 
by  all  sorts  of  excesses,  Des  Esseintes  finds 
himself  at  thirty  sur  le  chemin,  degrise,  seul, 
abominablement  lasse.  He  has  already  realised 
that  “the  world  is  divided,  in  great  part,  into 
swaggerers  and  simpletons.”  His  one  desire 
is  to  “hide  himself  away,  far  from  thejworld, 
in  some  retreat,  where  he  might  deaden  the 
sound  of  the  loud  rumbling  of  inflexible  fife,  as 
one  covers  the  street  with  straw,  for  sick 
people.”  This  retreat  he  discovers,  just  far 
enough  from  Paris  to  be  safe  from  disturbance, 
just  near  enough  to  be  saved  from  the  nostalgia 
of  the  unattainable.  He  succeeds  in  making 
his  house  a paradise  of  the  artificial,  choosing 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


245 


the  tones  of  colour  that  go  best  with  candle- 
light, for  it  need  scarcely  be  said  that  Des 
Esseintes  has  effected  a simple  transposition 
of  night  and  day.  His  disappearance  from  the 
world  has  been  complete;  it  seems  to  him  that 
the  “ comfortable  desert  ” of  his  exile  need  never 
cease  to  be  just  such  a luxurious  solitude;  it 
seems  to  him  that  he  has  attained  his  desire, 
that  he  has  attained  to  happiness. 

Disturbing  physical  symptoms  harass  him 
from  time  to  time,  but  they  pass.  It  is  an 
effect  of  nerves  that  now  and  again  he  is 
haunted  by  remembrance;  the  recurrence  of 
a perfume,  the  reading  of  a book,  brings 
back  a period  of  life  when  his  deliberate  per- 
versity was  exercised  actively  in  matters  of 
the  senses.  There  are  his  fantastic  banquets, 
his  fantastic  amours:  the  repas  de  deuil,  Miss 
Urania  the  acrobat,  the  episode  of  the  ven- 
triloquist-woman and  the  reincarnation  of  the 
Sphinx  and  the  Chimsera  of  Flaubert,  the  epi- 
sode of  the  boy  chez  Madame  Laure.  A casual 
recollection  brings  up  the  schooldays  of  his 
childhood  with  the  Jesuits,  and  with  that  the 
beliefs  of  childhood,  the  fantasies  of  the  Church, 
the  Catholic  abnegation  of  the  Imitatio  joining 


246  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


so  strangely  with  the  final  philosophy  of 
Schopenhauer.  At  times  his  brain  is  haunted 
by  social  theories — his  dull  hatred  of  the 
ordinary  in  life  taking  form  in  the  region  of 
ideas.  But  in  the  main  he  feeds  himself,  with 
something  of  the  satisfaction  of  success,  on  the 
strange  food  for  the  sensations  with  which  he 
has  so  laboriously  furnished  himself.  There 
are  his  books,  and  among  these  a special  library 
of  the  Latin  writers  of  the  Decadence.  Exas- 
perated by  Virgil,  profoundly  contemptuous  of 
Horace,  he  tolerates  Lucan  (which  is  surpris- 
ing), adores  Petronius  (as  well  he  might),  and 
delights  in  the  neologisms  and  the  exotic  nov- 
elty of  Apuleius.  His  curiosity  extends  to  the 
later  Christian  poets — from  the  coloured  verse 
of  Claudian  down  to  the  verse  which  is  scarcely 
verse  of  the  incoherent  ninth  century.  He  is, 
of  course,  an  amateur  of  exquisite  printing,  of 
beautiful  bindings,  and  possesses  an  incom- 
parable Baudelaire  ( edition  tiree  a un  exem- 
plaire),  a unique  Mallarme.  Catholicism  being 
the  adopted  religion  of  the  Decadence — for  its 
venerable  age,  valuable  in  such  matters  as 
the  age  of  an  old  wine,  its  vague  excitation  of 
the  senses,  its  mystical  picturesqueness — Des 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


247 


Esseintes  has  a curious  collection  of  the  later 
Catholic  literature,  where  Lacordaire  and  the 
Comte  de  Falloux,  Veuillot  and  Ozanam,  find 
their  place  side  by  side  with  the  half-prophetic, 
half-ingenious  Hello,  the  amalgam  of  a mon- 
strous mysticism  and  a casuistical  sensuality, 
Barbey  d’Aurevilly.  His  collection  of  “pro- 
fane” writers  is  small,  but  it  is  selected  for  the 
qualities  of  exotic  charm  that  have  come  to 
be  his  only  care  in  art — for  the  somewdiat  dis- 
eased, or  the  somewhat  artificial  beauty  that 
alone  can  strike  a responsive  thrill  from  his 
exacting  nerves.  “ Considering  within  himself, 
he  realised  that  a work  of  art,  in  order  to 
attract  him,  must  come  to  him  with  that  qual- 
ity of  strangeness  demanded  by  Edgar  Poe; 
but  he  fared  yet  further  along  this  route,  and 
sought  for  all  the  Byzantine  flora  of  the  brain, 
for  complicated  deliquescences  of  style;  he 
required  a troubling  indecision  over  which  he 
could  muse,  fashioning  it  after  his  will  to  more 
of  vagueness  or  of  solid  form,  according  to  the 
state  of  his  mind  at  the  moment.  He  de- 
lighted in  a work  of  art  both  for  what  it  was  in 
itself  and  for  what  it  could  lend  him;  he  would 
fain  go  along  with  it,  thanks  to  it,  as  though 


248  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


sustained  by  an  adjuvant,  as  though  borne  in 
a vehicle,  into  a sphere  where  his  sublimated 
sensations  would  wake  in  him  an  unaccus- 
tomed stir,  the  cause  of  which  he  would  long 
and  vainly  seek  to  determine.”  So  he  comes 
to  care  supremely  for  Baudelaire,  “who,  more 
than  any  other,  possessed  the  marvellous 
power  of  rendering,  with  a strange  sanity  of 
expression,  the  most  fleeting,  the  most  waver- 
ing morbid  states  of  exhausted  minds,  of  des- 
olate souls.”  In  Flaubert  he  prefers  La  Ten- 
tation  de  Saint- Antoine;  in  Goncourt,  La 
Faustin;  in  Zola,  La  F ante  de  V Abbe  Mouret — 
the  exceptional,  the  most  remote  and  recherche 
outcome  of  each  temperament.  And  of  the 
three  it  is  the  novel  of  Goncourt  that  appeals 
to  him  with  special  intimacy — that  novel 
which,  more  than  any  other,  seems  to  express, 
in  its  exquisitely  perverse  charm,  all  that 
decadent  civilisation  of  which  Des  Esseintes 
is  the  type  and  symbol.  In  poetry  he  has 
discovered  the  fine  perfume,  the  evanescent 
charm,  of  Paul  Verlaine,  and  near  that  great 
poet  (forgetting,  strangely,  Arthur  Rimbaud) 
he  places  two  poets  who  are  curious — the  dis- 
concerting, tumultuous  Tristan  Corbiere,  and 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


249 


the  painted  and  bejewelled  Theodore  Hannon. 
With  Edgar  Poe  he  has  the  instinctive  sym- 
pathy which  drew  Baudelaire  to  the  enig- 
matically perverse  Decadent  of  America;  he 
delights,  sooner  than  all  the  world,  in  the 
astonishing,  unbalanced,  unachieved  genius  of 
Yilliers  de  Hsle-Adam.  Finally,  it  is  in  Ste- 
phane  Mallarme  that  he  finds  the  incarnation 
of  “the  decadence  of  a literature,  irreparably 
affected  in  its  organism,  weakened  in  its 
ideas  by  age,  exhausted  by  the  excesses  of 
syntax,  sensitive  only  to  the  curiosity  which 
fevers  sick  people,  and  yet  hastening  to  say 
everything,  now  at  the  end,  torn  by  the  wish 
to  atone  for  all  its  omissions  of  enjoyment, 
to  bequeath  its  subtlest  memories  of  sorrow 
on  its  death-bed.” 

But  it  is  not  on  books  alone  that  Des 
Esseintes  nurses  his  sick  and  craving  fancy. 
He  pushes  his  delight  in  the  artificial  to  the 
last  limits,  and  diverts  himself  with  a bou- 
quet of  jewels,  a concert  of  flowers,  an  or- 
chestra of  liqueurs,  an  orchestra  of  perfumes. 
In  flowers  he  prefers  the  real  flowers  that 
imitate  artificial  ones.  It  is  the  monstrosities 
of  nature,  the  offspring  of  unnatural  adulteries, 


250  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


that  he  cherishes  in  the  barbarically  coloured 
flowers,  the  plants  with  barbaric  names,  the 
carnivorous  plants  of  the  Antilles — morbid 
horrors  of  vegetation,  chosen,  not  for  their 
beauty,  but  for  their  strangeness.  And  his 
imagination  plays  harmonies  on  the  sense  of 
taste,  like  combinations  of  music,  from  the 
flute-like  sweetness  of  anisette,  the  trumpet- 
note  of  kirsch,  the  eager  yet  velvety  sharp- 
ness of  curagao,  the  clarionet.  He  combines 
scents,  weaving  them  into  odorous  melodies, 
with  effects  like  those  of  the  refrains  of  certain 
poems,  employing,  for  example,  the  method  of 
Baudelaire  in  U Irreparable  and  Le  Balcon, 
where  the  last  line  of  the  stanza  is  the  echo  of 
the  first,  in  the  languorous  progression  of  the 
melody.  And  above  all  he  has  his  few,  care- 
fully chosen  pictures,  with  their  diverse  notes 
of  strange  beauty  and  strange  terror— the  two 
Salomes  of  Gustave  Moreau,  the  “Religious 
Persecutions”  of  Jan  Luyken,  the  opium- 
dreams  of  Odilon  Redon.  His  favourite  artist 
is  Gustave  Moreau,  and  it  is  on  this  superb  and 
disquieting  picture  that  he  cares  chiefly  to  dwell. 

A throne,  like  the  high  altar  of  a cathedral,  rose  be- 
neath innumerable  arches  springing  from  columns,  thick- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


251 


set  as  Roman  pillars,  enamelled  with  vari-coloured  bricks, 
set  with  mosaics,  incrusted  with  lapis  lazuli  and  sardonyx, 
in  a palace  like  the  basilica  of  an  architecture  at  once 
Mussulman  and  Byzantine.  In  the  centre  of  the  taber- 
nacle surmounting  the  altar,  fronted  with  rows  of  cir- 
cular steps,  sat  the  Tetrarch  Herod,  the  tiara  on  his  head, 
his  legs  pressed  together,  his  hands  on  his  knees.  His 
face  was  yellow,  parchment-like,  annulated  with  wrinkles, 
withered  with  age ; his  long  beard  floated  like  a white  cloud 
on  the  jewelled  stars  that  constellated  the  robe  of  netted 
gold  across  his  breast.  Around  this  statue,  motionless, 
frozen  in  the  sacred  pose  of  a Hindu  god,  perfumes  burned, 
throwing  out  clouds  of  vapour,  pierced,  as  by  the  phos- 
phorescent eyes  of  animals,  by  the  fire  of  precious  stones 
set  in  the  sides  of  the  throne;  then  the  vapour  mounted, 
unrolling  itself  beneath  arches  where  the  blue  smoke 
mingled  with  the  powdered  gold  of  great  sunrays,  fallen 
from  the  domes. 

In  the  perverse  odour  of  perfumes,  in  the  overheated 
atmosphere  of  this  church,  Salome,  her  left  arm  extended 
in  a gesture  of  command,  her  bent  right  arm  holding  at 
the  level  of  the  face  a great  lotus,  advances  slowly  to  the 
sound  of  a guitar,  thrummed  by  a woman  who  crouches 
on  the  floor. 

With  collected,  solemn,  almost  august  countenance, 
she  begins  the  lascivious  dance  that  should  waken  the 
sleeping  senses  of  the  aged  Herod;  her  breasts  undulate, 
become  rigid  at  the  contact  of  the  whirling  necklets; 
diamonds  sparkle  on  the  dead  whiteness  of  her  skin,  her 
bracelets,  girdles,  rings,  shoot  sparks;  on  her  triumphal 
robe,  sewn  with  pearls,  flowered  with  silver,  sheeted  with 
gold,  the  jewelled  breastplate,  whose  every  stitch  is  a 
precious  stone,  bursts  into  flame,  scatters  in  snakes  of 


252  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


fire,  swarms  on  the  ivory-toned,  tea-rose  flesh,  like  splendid 
insects  with  dazzling  wings,  marbled  with  carmine,  dotted 
with  morning  gold,  diapered  with  steel-blue,  streaked  with 
peacock-green. 


In  the  work  of  Gustave  Moreau,  conceived  on  no 
Scriptural  data,  Des  Esseintes  saw  at  last  the  realisa- 
tion of  the  strange,  superhuman  Salom6  that  he  had 
dreamed.  She  was  no  more  the  mere  dancing-girl  who, 
with  the  corrupt  torsion  of  her  limbs,  tears  a cry  of 
desire  from  an  old  man;  who,  with  her  eddying  breasts, 
her  palpitating  body,  her  quivering  thighs,  breaks  the 
energy,  melts  the  will,  of  a king;  she  has  become  the 
symbolic  deity  of  indestructible  Lust,  the  goddess  of 
immortal  Hysteria,  the  accursed  Beauty,  chosen  among 
many  by  the  catalepsy  that  has  stiffened  her  limbs,  that 
has  hardened  her  muscles;  the  monstrous,  indifferent, 
irresponsible,  insensible  Beast,  poisoning,  like  Helen  of 
old,  all  that  go  near  to  her,  all  that  look  upon  her,  all  that 
she  touches. 

It  is  in  such  a “Palace  of  Art”  that  Des 
Esseintes  would  recreate  his  already  over- 
wrought body  and  brain,  and  the  monotony 
of  its  seclusion  is  only  once  broken  by  a 
single  excursion  into  the  world  without.  This 
one  episode  of  action,  this  one  touch  of  realism 
in  a book  given  over  to  the  artificial,  confined 
to  a record  of  sensation,  is  a projected  voyage 
to  London,  a voyage  that  never  occurs.  Des 


I 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS  253 

Esseintes  has  been  reading  Dickens,  idly,  to 
quiet  his  nerves,  and  the  violent  colours  of 
those  ultra-British  scenes  and  characters  have 
imposed  themselves  upon  his  imagination. 
Days  of  rain  and  fog  complete  the  picture  of 
that  pays  de  brume  et  de  boue,  and  suddenly, 
stung  by  the  unwonted  desire  for  change,  he 
takes  the  train  to  Paris,  resolved  to  distract 
himself  by  a visit  to  London.  Arrived  in 
Paris  before  his  time,  he  takes  a cab  to  the 
office  of  Galignani’s  Messenger , fancying  him- 
self, as  the  rain-drops  rattle  on  the  roof  and 
the  mud  splashes  against  the  windows,  already 
in  the  midst  of  the  immense  city,  its  smoke 
and  dirt.  He  reaches  Galignani’s  Messenger, 
and  there,  turning  over  Baedekers  and  Mur- 
rays, loses  himself  in  dreams  of  an  imagined 
London.  He  buys  a Baedeker,  and,  to  pass 
the  time,  enters  the  “Bodega”  at  the  corner 
of  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  and  the  Rue  Castiglione. 
The  wine-cellar  is  crowded  with  Englishmen: 
he  sees,  as  he  drinks  his  port,  and  listens  to  the 
unfamiliar  accents,  all  the  characters  of  Dickens 
• — a whole  England  of  caricature;  as  he  drinks 
his  Amontillado,  the  recollection  of  Poe  puts  a 
new  horror  into  the  good-humoured  faces 


254  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


about  him.  Leaving  the  “Bodega,”  he  steps 
out  again  into  the  rain-swept  street,  regains 
his  cab,  and  drives  to  the  English  tavern  of 
the  Rue  d’ Amsterdam.  He  has  just  time  for 
dinner,  and  he  finds  a place  beside  the  insu- 
laires,  with  “their  porcelain  eyes,  their  crimson 
cheeks,”  and  orders  a heavy  English  dinner, 
which  he  washes  down  with  ale  and  porter, 
seasoning  his  coffee,  as  he  imagines  we  do  in 
England,  with  gin.  As  time  passes,  and  the 
hour  of  the  train  draws  near,  he  begins  to  re- 
flect vaguely  on  his  project;  he  recalls  the  dis- 
illusion of  the  visit  he  had  once  paid  to  Hol- 
land. Does  not  a similar  disillusion  await  him 
in  London?  “Why  travel,  when  one  can  travel 
so  splendidly  in  a chair?  Was  he  not  at  Lon- 
don already,  since  its  odours,  its  atmosphere, 
its  inhabitants,  its  food,  its  utensils,  were  all 
about  him?  ” The  train  is  due,  but  he  does  not 
stir.  “I  have  felt  and  seen,”  he  says  to  him- 
self, “what  I wanted  to  feel  and  see.  I have 
been  saturated  with  English  life  all  this  time; 
it  would  be  madness  to  lose,  by  a clumsy 
change  of  place,  these  imperishable  sensa- 
tions.” So  he  gathers  together  his  luggage, 
and  goes  home  again,  resolving  never  to  aban- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


255 


don  the  “ docile  phantasmagoria  of  the  brain” 
for  the  mere  realities  of  the  actual  world.  But 
his  nervous  malady,  one  of  whose  symptoms 
had  driven  him  forth  and  brought  him  back 
so  spasmodically,  is  on  the  increase.  He  is 
seized  by  hallucinations,  haunted  by  sounds: 
the  hysteria  of  Schumann,  the  morbid  exalta- 
tion of  Berlioz,  communicate  themselves  to 
him  in  the  music  that  besieges  his  brain. 
Obliged  at  last  to  send  for  a doctor,  we  find  him, 
at  the  end  of  the  book,  ordered  back  to  Paris, 
to  the  normal  life,  the  normal  conditions,  with 
just  that  chance  of  escape  from  death  or  mad- 
ness. So  suggestively,  so  instructively,  closes 
the  record  of  a strange,  attractive  folly — in 
itself  partly  a serious  ideal  (which  indeed  is 
Huysmans’  own),  partly  the  caricature  of 
that  ideal.  Des  Esseintes,  though  studied 
from  a real  man,  who  is  known  to  those  who 
know  a certain  kind  of  society  in  Paris,  is  a 
type  rather  than  a man:  he  is  the  offspring 
of  the  Decadent  art  that  he  adores,  and  this 
book  a sort  of  breviary  for  its  worshippers. 
It  has  a place  of  its  own  in  the  literature  of 
the  day,  for  it  sums  up,  not  only  a talent,  but  a 
spiritual  epoch. 


256  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


A Rebours  is  a book  that  can  only  be 
written  once,  and  since  that  date  Huysmans 
has  published  a short  story,  Un  Dilemme 
(1887),  which  is  merely  a somewhat  lengthy 
anecdote;  two  novels,  En  Rade  (1887)  and 
La-Bas  (1891),  both  of  which  are  interesting 
experiments,  but  neither  of  them  an  entire 
success;  and  a volume  of  art  criticism,  Cer- 
tains (1890),  notable  for  a single  splendid 
essay,  that  on  Felicien  Rops,  the  etcher  of 
the  fantastically  erotic.  En  Rade  is  a sort 
of  deliberately  exaggerated  record — vision 
rather  then  record — of  the  disillusions  of  a 
country  sojourn,  as  they  affect  the  disordered 
nerves  of  a town  nevrose.  The  narrative 
is  punctuated  by  nightmares,  marvellously 
woven  out  of  nothing,  and  with  no  psycho- 
logical value — the  human  part  of  the  book 
being  a sort  of  picturesque  pathology  at 
best,  the  representation  of  a series  of  states 
of  nerves,  sharpened  by  the  tragic  ennui  of 
the  country.  There  is  a cat  which  becomes 
interesting  in  its  agonies;  but  the  long  bore- 
dom of  the  man  and  woman  is  only  too 
faithfully  shared  with  the  reader.  La-Bas 
is  a more  artistic  creation,  on  a more  solid 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


257 


foundation.  It  is  a study  of  Satanism,  a 
dexterous  interweaving  of  the  history  of  Gilles 
de  Retz  (the  traditional  Bluebeard)  with  the 
contemporary  manifestations  of  the  Black 
Art.  “The  execration  of  impotence,  the  hate 
of  the  mediocre — that  is  perhaps  one  of  the 
most  indulgent  definitions  of  Diabolism,’ ’ 
says  Huysmans,  somewhere  in  the  book, 
and  it  is  on  this  side  that  one  finds  the  link 
of  connection  with  the  others  of  that  series 
of  pessimist  studies  in  life.  Un  naturalisme 
spiritualiste,  he  defines  his  own  art  at  this 
point  in  its  development;  and  it  is  in  some- 
what the  “documentary”  manner  that  he 
applies  himself  to  the  study  of  these  strange 
problems,  half  of  hysteria,  half  of  a real  mys- 
tical corruption  that  does  actually  exist  in 
our  midst.  I do  not  know  whether  the 
monstrous  tableau  of  the  Black  Mass — so 
marvellously,  so  revoltingly  described  in  the 
central  episode  of  the  book — is  still  enacted 
in  our  days,  but  I do  know  that  all  but  the 
most  horrible  practices  of  the  sacrilegious 
magic  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  yet  performed, 
from  time  to  time,  in  a secrecy  which  is  all 
but  absolute.  The  character  of  Madame 


258  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Chantelouve  is  an  attempt,  probably  the 
first  in  literature,  to  diagnose  a case  of  Sadism 
in  a woman.  To  say  that  it  is  successful 
would  be  to  assume  that  the  thing  is  possible, 
which  one  hesitates  to  do.  The  book  is  even 
more  disquieting,  to  the  normal  mind,  than 
A Rebours.  But  it  is  not,  like  that,  the  study 
of  an  exception  which  has  become  a type. 
It  is  the  study  of  an  exception  which  does  not 
profess  to  be  anything  but  a disease. 

Huysmans’  place  in  contemporary  litera- 
ture is  not  quite  easy  to  estimate.  There  is 
a danger  of  being  too  much  attracted,  or  too 
much  repelled,  by  those  qualities  of  deliberate 
singularity  which  make  his  work,  sincere 
expression  as  it  is  of  his  own  personality,  so 
artificial  and  recherche  in  itself.  With  his 
pronounced,  exceptional  characteristics,  it 
would  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  write 
fiction  impersonally,  or  to  range  himself,  for 
long,  in  any  school,  under  any  master. 
Interrogated  one  day  as  to  his  opinion  of 
Naturalism,  he  had  but  to  say  in  reply: 
Aufond,  il  y a des  ecrivains  qui  out  du  talent 
et  d'autres  qui  n'en  ont  pas,  qu’ils  soient  natu- 
ralistes,  romantiques,  decadents,  tout  ce  que 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


259 


vous  voudrez,  ga  m’est  egal!  il  s’agit  pour  moi 
d’avoir  du  talent,  et  voila  tout!  But,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  has  undergone  various  influences, 
he  has  had  his  periods.  From  the  first  he 
has  had  a style  of  singular  pungency,  novelty, 
and  colour;  and,  even  in  Le  Drageoir  d Epices, 
we  find  such  daring  combinations  as  this 
( Camaieu  Rouge)  — Cette  fanfare  de  rouge 
m’ ttourdissait;  cotte  gamme  d’une  intensite 
furieuse,  d’une  violence  inouie,  m’ aveuglait. 
Working  upon  the  foundation  of  Flaubert 
and  of  Goncourt,  the  two  great  modern 
stylists,  he  has  developed  an  intensely  per- 
sonal style  of  his  own,  in  which  the  sense  of 
rhythm  is  entirely  dominated  by  the  sense 
of  colour.  He  manipulates  the  Franch  lan- 
guage with  a freedom  sometimes  barbarous, 
“ ‘dragging  his  images  by  the  heels  or  the 
hair”  (in  the  admirable  phrase  of  Leon  Bloy) 
“up  and  down  the  worm-eaten  staircase  of 
terrified  syntax,”  gaining,  certainly,  the  effects 
at  which  he  aims.  He  possesses,  in  the 
highest  degree,  that  style  tachete  et  faisande 
-high-flavoured  and  spotted  with  corrup- 
tion— that  he  attributes  to  Goncourt  and 
Verlaine.  And  with  this  audacious  and  bar- 


260  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


baric  profusion  of  words — chosen  always  for 
their  colour  and  their  vividly  expressive 
quality — he  is  able  to  describe  the  essentially 
modern  aspects  of  things  as  no  one  had  ever 
described  them  before.  No  one  before  him 
had  ever  so  realised  the  perverse  charm  of 
the  sordid,  the  perverse  charm  of  the  arti- 
ficial. Exceptional  always,  it  is  for  such 
qualities  as  these,  rather  than  for  the  ordi- 
nary qualities  of  the  novelist,  that  he  is 
remarkable.  His  stories  are  without  inci- 
dent, they  are  constructed  to  go  on  until 
they  stop,  they  are  almost  without  charac- 
ters. His  psychology  is  a matter  of  the 
sensations,  and  chiefly  the  visual  sensations. 
The  moral  nature  is  ignored,  the  emotions 
resolve  themselves  for  the  most  part  into  a 
sordid  ennui,  rising  at  times  into  a rr.ge  at 
existence.  The  protagonist  of  every  book 
is  not  so  much  a character  as  a bundle  of  im- 
pressions and  sensations — the  vague  outline 
of  a single  consciousness,  his  own.  But  it  is 
that  single  consciousness— in  this  morbidly 
personal  writer — with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned. For  Huysmans’  novels,  with  all 
their  strangeness,  their  charm,  their  repul- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 


261 


sion,  typical  too,  as  they  are,  of  much  beside 
himself,  are  certainly  the  expression  of  a 
personality  as  remarkable  as  that  of  any 
contemporary  writer. 

1892. 


II.  THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 

In  the  preface  to  his  first  novel,  Marthe: 
histoire  d'une  fille,  thirty  years  ago,  Huys- 
mans  defined  his  theory  of  art  in  this  defiant 
phrase:  “I  write  what  I see,  what  I feel, 
and  what  I have  experienced,  and  I write  it 
as  well  as  I can:  that  is  all.”  Ten  or  twelve 
years  ago,  he  could  still  say,  in  answer  to 
an  interviewer  who  asked  him  his  opinion  of 
Naturalism:  “At  bottom,  there  are  writers 
who  have  talent  and  others  who  have  not; 
let  them  be  Naturalists,  Romantics,  Deca- 
dents, what  you  will,  it  is  all  the  same  to 
me:  I only  want  to  know  if  they  have  talent.” 
Such  theoretical  liberality,  in  a writer  of 
original  talent,  is  a little  disconcerting:  it 
means  that  he  is  without  a theory  of  his 
own,  that  he  is  not  yet  conscious  of  having 
chosen  his  own  way.  And,  indeed,  it  is  only 
with  En  Route  that  Huysmans  can  be  said 
to  have  discovered  the  direction  in  which  he 
had  really  been  travelling  from  the  beginning. 

262 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


263 


In  a preface  written  not  long  since  for 
a limited  edition  of  A Rebours,  Huysmans 
confessed  that  he  had  never  been  conscious 
of  the  direction  in  which  he  was  travelling. 
“My  life  and  my  literature/’  he  affirmed, 
“have  undoubtedly  a certain  amount  of  pas- 
sivity, of  the  incalculable,  of  a direction  not 
mine.  I have  simply  obeyed;  I have  been 
led  by  what  are  called  ‘mysterious  ways.’” 
He  is  speaking  of  the  conversion  which  took 
him  to  La  Trappe  in  1892,  but  the  words 
apply  to  the  whole  course  of  his  career  as  a 
man  of  letters.  In  La-Bas,  which  is  a sort  of 
false  start,  he  had,  indeed,  realised,  though 
for  himself  at  that  time  ineffectually,  that 
“it  is  essential  to  preserve  the  veracity  of 
the  document,  the  precision  of  detail,  the 
fibrous  and  nervous  language  of  Realism, 
but  it  is  equally  essential  to  become  the 
well-digger  of  the  soul,  and  not  to  attempt 
to  explain  what  is  mysterious  by  mental 
maladies.  ...  It  is  essential,  in  a word, 
to  follow  the  great  road  so  deeply  dug  out 
by  Zola,  but  it  is  necessary  also  to  trace  a 
parallel  pathway  in  the  air,  and  to  grapple 
with  the  within  and  the  after,  to  create,  in 


264  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


a word,  a spiritual  Naturalism.”  This  is 
almost  a definition  of  the  art  of  En  Route , 
where  this  spiritual  realism  is  applied  to  the 
history  of  a soul,  a consciousness;  in  La 
Cathedrale  the  method  has  still  further  de- 
veloped, and  Huysmans  becomes,  in  his  own 
way,  a Symbolist. 

To  the  student  of  psychology  few  more  in- 
teresting cases  could  be  presented  than  the 
development  of  Huysmans.  From  the  first 
he  has  been  a man  “for  whom  the  visible 
world  existed,”  indeed,  but  as  the  scene  of 
a slow  martyrdom.  The  world  has  always 
appeared  to  him  to  be  a profoundly  un- 
comfortable, unpleasant,  and  ridiculous  place; 
and  it  has  been  a necessity  of  his  tempera- 
ment to  examine  it  minutely,  with  all  the 
patience  of  disgust,  and  a necessity  of  his 
method  to  record  it  with  an  almost  ecstatic 
hatred.  In  his  first  book,  Le  Drageoir  a 
Epices,  published  at  the  age  of  twenty-six, 
we  find  him  seeking  his  colour  by  prefer- 
ence in  a drunkard’s  cheek  or  a carcase  out- 
side a butcher’s  shop.  Marthe,  published  at 
Brussels  in  1876,  anticipates  La  Fille  Elisa 
and  Nana,  but  it  has  a crude  brutality  of 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


265 


observation  in  which  there  is  hardly  a touch 
of  pity.  Les  Sceurs  Vatard  is  a frame  with- 
out a picture,  but  in  En  Menage  the  dreary 
tedium  of  existence  is  chronicled  in  all  its 
insignificance  with  a kind  of  weary  and 
aching  hate.  “We,  too,”  is  its  conclusion, 
“by  leave  of  the  everlasting  stupidity  of 
things,  may,  like  our  fellow-citizens,  live 
stupid  and  respected.”  The  fantastic  unre- 
ality, the  exquisite  artificiality  of  A Rebours, 
the  breviary  of  the  decadence,  is  the  first 
sign  of  that  possible  escape  which  Huysmans 
has  always  foreseen  in  the  direction  of  art, 
but  which  he  is  still  unable  to  make  into 
more  than  an  artificial  paradise,  in  which 
beauty  turns  to  a cruel  hallucination  and 
imprisons  the  soul  still  more  fatally.  The 
end  is  a cry  of  hopeless  hope,  in  which  Huys- 
mans did  not  understand  the  meaning  till 
later:  “Lord,  have  pity  of  the  Christian 
who  doubts,  of  the  sceptic  who  would  fain 
believe,  of  the  convict  of  life  who  sets  sail 
alone  by  night,  under  a firmament  lighted 
only  by  the  consoling  watch-lights  of  the  old 
hope.” 

In  La-Bas  we  are  in  yet  another  stage  of 


266  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


this  strange  pilgrim’s  progress.  The  disgust 
which  once  manifested  itself  in  the  merely 
external  revolt  against  the  ugliness  of  streets, 
the  imbecility  of  faces,  has  become  more  and 
more  internalised,  and  the  attraction  of  what 
is  perverse  in  the  unusual  beauty  of  art  has 
led,  by  some  obscure  route,  to  the  perilous 
halfway  house  of  a corrupt  mysticism.  The 
book,  with  its  monstrous  pictures  of  the 
Black  Mass  and  of  the  spiritual  abomina- 
tions of  Satanism,  is  one  step  further  in  the 
direction  of  the  supernatural;  and  this,  too, 
has  its  desperate,  unlooked-for  conclusion: 
“Christian  glory  is  a laughing-stock  to  our 
age;  it  contaminates  the  supernatural  and 
casts  out  the  world  to  come.”  In  La-Bas 
we  go  down  into  the  deepest  gulf;  En  Route 
sets  us  one  stage  along  a new  way,  and  at 
this  turning-point  begins  the  later  Huysmans. 

The  old  conception  of  the  novel  as  an 
amusing  tale  of  adventures,  though  it  has 
still  its  apologists  in  England,  has  long  since 
ceased  in  France  to  mean  anything  more 
actual  than  powdered  wigs  and  lace  ruffles. 
Like  children  who  cry  to  their  elders  for  “a 
story,  a story,”  the  English  public  still  wants 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


267 


its  plot,  its  heroine,  its  villain.  That  the 
novel  should  be  psychological  was  a discovery 
as  early  as  Benjamin  Constant,  whose  Adolphe 
anticipates  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir,  that  rare, 
revealing,  yet  somewhat  arid  masterpiece  of 
Stendahl.  But  that  psychology  could  be 
carried  so  far  into  the  darkness  of  the  soul, 
that  the  flaming  walls  of  the  world  them- 
selves faded  to  a glimmer,  was  a discovery 
which  had  been  made  by  no  novelist  before 
Huysmans  wrote  En  Route.  At  once  the 
novel  showed  itself  capable  of  competing,  on 
their  own  ground,  with  poetry,  with  the  great 
“confessions,”  with  philosophy.  En  Route 
is  perhaps  the  first  novel  which  does  not 
set  out  with  the  aim  of  amusing  its  readers. 
It  offers  you  no  more  entertainment  than 
Paradise  Lost  or  the  Confessions  of  St.  Au- 
gustine, and  it  is  possible  to  consider  it 
on  the  same  level.  The  novel,  which,  after 
having  chronicled  the  adventures  of  the  Van- 
ity Fairs  of  this  world,  has  set  itself  with 
admirable  success  to  analyse  the  amorous  and 
ambitious  and  money-making  intelligence  of 
the  conscious  and  practical  self,  sets  itself  at 
last  to  the  final  achievement:  the  revelation 


268  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


of  the  sub-conscious  self,  no  longer  the  in- 
telligence, but  the  soul.  Here,  then,  purged 
of  the  distraction  of  incident,  liberated  from 
the  bondage  of  a too  realistic  conversation, 
in  which  the  aim  had  been  to  convey  the 
very  gesture  of  breathing  life,  internalised  to 
a complete  liberty,  in  which,  just  because  it 
is  so  absolutely  free,  art  is  able  to  accept, 
without  limiting  itself,  the  expressive  medium 
of  a convention,  we  have  in  the  novel  a new 
form,  which  may  be  at  once  a confession  and 
a decoration,  the  soul  and  a pattern. 

This  story  of  a conversion  is  a new  thing 
in  modern  French;  it  is  a confession,  a self- 
auscultation of  the  soul;  a kind  of  thinking 
aloud.  It  fixes,  in  precise  words,  all  the 
uncertainties,  the  contradictions,  the  absurd 
unreasonableness  and  not  less  absurd  logic, 
which  distract  man’s  brain  in  the  passing 
over  him  of  sensation  and  circumstance.  And 
all  this  thinking  is  concentrated  on  one 
end,  is  concerned  with  the  working  out,  in 
his  own  singular  way,  of  one  man’s  salva- 
tion. There  is  a certain  dry  hard  casuistry, 
a subtlety  and  closeness  almost  ecclesiastical, 
in  the  investigation  of  an  obscure  and  yet 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


269 


definite  region,  whose  intellectual  passions 
are  as  varied  and  as  tumultuous  as  those  of 
the  heart.  Every  step  is  taken  deliberately, 
is  weighed,  approved,  condemned,  viewed 
from  this  side  and  from  that,  and  at  the  same 
time  one  feels  behind  all  this  reasoning  an 
impulsion  urging  a soul  onward  against  its 
will.  In  this  astonishing  passage,  through 
Satanism  to  faith,  in  which  the  cry,  “I  am 
so  weary  of  myself,  so  sick  of  my  miserable 
existence/’  echoes  through  page  after  page, 
until  despair  dies  into  conviction,  the  convic- 
tion of  “the  uselessness  of  concerning  one- 
self about  anything  but  mysticism  and  the 
liturgy,  of  thinking  about  anything  but  about 
God,”  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  the  sin- 
cerity of  an  actual,  unique  experience.  The 
force  of  mere  curiosity  can  go  far,  can  pene- 
trate to  a certain  depth;  yet  there  is  a point 
at  which  mere  curiosity,  even  that  of  genius, 
comes  to  an  end;  and  we  are  left  to  the 
individual  soul’s  apprehension  of  what  seems 
to  it  the  reality  of  spiritual  things.  Such 
a personal  apprehension  comes  to  us  out  of 
this  book,  and  at  the  same  time,  just  as  in 
the  days  when  he  forced  language  to  express, 


270  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


in  a more  coloured  and  pictorial  way  than 
it  had  ever  expressed  before,  the  last  esca- 
ping details  of  material  things,  so,  in  this 
analysis  of  the  aberrations  and  warfares,  the 
confessions  and  trials  of  the  soul  in  penitence, 
Huysmans  has  found  words  for  even  the  most 
subtle  and  illusive  aspects  of  that  inner  life 
which  he  has  come,  at  the  last,  to  apprehend. 

In  La  Cathedrale  we  are  still  occupied  with 
this  sensitive,  lethargic,  persevering  soul,  but 
with  that  soul  in  one  of  its  longest  halts  by 
the  way,  as  it  undergoes  the  slow,  permeating 
influence  of  “la  Cathedrale  mystique  par  ex- 
cellence,” the  cathedral  of  Chartres.  And 
the  greater  part  of  the  book  is  taken  up  with 
a study  of  this  cathedral,  of  that  elaborate 
and  profound  symbolism  by  which  “the  soul 
of  sanctuaries”  slowly  reveals  itself  (quel 
laconisme  liermetique!)  with  a sort  of  parallel 
interpretation  of  the  symbolism  which  the 
Church  of  the  Middle  Ages  concealed  or 
revealed  in  colours,  precious  stones,  plants, 
animals,  numbers,  odours,  and  in  the  Bible 
itself,  in  the  setting  together  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments. 

No  doubt,  to  some  extent  this  book  is  less 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


271 


interesting  than  En  Route,  in  the  exact 
proportion  in  which  everything  in  the  world 
is  less  interesting  than  the  human  soul. 
There  are  times  when  Durtal  is  almost  for- 
gotten, and,  unjustly  enough,  it  may  seem 
as  if  we  are  given  this  archaeology,  these 
bestiaries,  for  their  own  sake.  To  fall  into 
this  error  is  to  mistake  the  whole  purpose 
of  the  book,  the  whole  extent  of  the  discovery 
in  art  which  Huysmans  has  been  one  of  the 
first  to  make. 

For  in  La  Cathedrale  Huysmans  does  but 
carry  further  the  principle  which  he  had 
perceived  in  En  Route,  showing,  as  he  does, 
how  inert  matter,  the  art  of  stones,  the 
growth  of  plants,  the  unconscious  life  of 
beasts,  may  be  brought  under  the  same  law 
of  the  soul,  may  obtain,  through  symbol,  a 
spiritual  existence.  He  is  thus  but  extending 
the  domain  of  the  soul  while  he  may  seem  to 
be  limiting  or  ignoring  it;  and  Durtal  may 
well  stand  aside  for  a moment,  in  at  least  the 
energy  of  contemplation,  while  he  sees,  with 
a new  understanding,  the  very  sight  of  his 
eyes,  the  very  staff  of  his  thoughts,  taking 
life  before  him,  a life  of  the  same  substance 


272.  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


as  his  own.  What  is  Symbolism  if  not  an 
establishing  of  the  links  which  hold  the  world 
together,  the  affirmation  of  an  eternal,  minute, 
intricate,  almost  invisible  life,  which  runs 
through  the  whole  universe?  Every  age  has 
its  own  symbols;  but  a symbol  once  perfectly 
expressed,  that  symbol  remains,  as  Gothic 
architecture  remains  the  very  soul  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  To  get  at  that  truth  which 
is  all  but  the  deepest  meaning  of  beauty,  to 
find  that  symbol  which  is  its  most  adequate 
expression,  is  in  itself  a kind  of  creation; 
and  that  is  what  Huysmans  does  for  us  in 
La  Cathedrale.  More  and  more  he  has  put 
aside  all  the  profane  and  accessible  and 
outward  pomp  of  writing  for  an  inner  and 
more  severe  beauty  of  perfect  truth.  He  has 
come  to  realise  that  truth  can  be  reached  and 
revealed  only  by  symbol.  Hence,  all  that 
description,  that  heaping  up  of  detail,  that 
passionately  patient  elaboration:  all  means 
to  an  end,  not,  as  you  may  hastily  incline  to 
think,  ends  in  themselves. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  how  often  an  artist 
perfects  a particular  means  of  expression  long 
before  he  has  any  notion  of  what  to  do  with 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


273 


it.  Huysmans  began  by  acquiring  so  aston- 
ishing a mastery  of  description  that  he  could 
describe  the  inside  of  a cow  hanging  in  a 
butcher’s  shop  as  beautifully  as  if  it  were 
a casket  of  jewels.  The  little  work-girls  of 
his  early  novels  were  taken  for  long  walks, 
in  which  they  would  have  seen  nothing  but 
the  arm  on  which  they  leant  and  the  milliners’ 
shops  which  they  passed;  and  what  they  did 
not  see  was  described,  marvellously,  in  twenty 
pages. 

Huysmans  is  a brain  all  eye,  a brain  which 
sees  even  ideas  as  if  they  had  a superficies. 
His  style  is  always  the  same,  whether  he 
writes  of  a butcher’s  shop  or  of  a stained- 
glass  window;  it  is  the  immediate  expres- 
sion of  a way  of  seeing,  so  minute  and  so 
intense  that  it  becomes  too  emphatic  for  ele- 
gance and  too  coloured  for  atmosphere  or 
composition,  always  ready  to  sacrifice  eu- 
phony to  either  fact  or  colour.  He  cares  only 
to  give  you  the  thing  seen,  exactly  as  he  sees  it, 
with  all  his  love  or  hate,  and  with  all  the 
exaggeration  which  that  feeling  brings  into 
it.  And  he  loves  beauty  as  a bulldog  loves  its 
mistress:  by  growling  at  all  her  enemies.  He 


274  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


honours  wisdom  by  annihilating  stupidity. 
His  art  of  painting  in  words  resembles  Monet’s 
art  of  painting  with  his  brush:  there  is  the 
same  power  of  rendering  a vivid  effect,  almost 
deceptively,  with  a crude  and  yet  sensitive 
realism.  “C’est  pour  la  gourmandise  de  Voeil 
un  gala  de  teintes ,”  he  says  of  the  provision 
cellars  at  Hamburg;  and  this  greed  of  the  eye 
has  eaten  up  in  him  almost  every  other  sense. 
Even  of  music  he  writes  as  a deaf  man  with  an 
eye  for  colour  might  write,  to  whom  a musician 
had  explained  certain  technical  means  of  ex- 
pression in  music.  No  one  has  ever  invented 
such  barbarous  and  exact  metaphors  for  the 
rendering  of  visual  sensations.  Property,  there 
is  no  metaphor;  the  words  say  exactly  what 
they  mean;  they  become  figurative,  as  we 
call  it,  in  their  insistence  on  being  themselves 
fact. 

Huysmans  knows  that  the  motive  force  of 
the  sentence  lies  in  the  verbs,  and  his  verbs 
are  the  most  singular,  precise,  and  expressive 
in  any  language.  But  in  subordinating,  as 
he  does,  every  quality  to  that  of  sharp,  telling 
truth,  the  truth  of  extremes,  his  style  loses 
charm;  yet  it  can  be  dazzling;  it  has  the 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


275 


solidity  of  those  walls  encrusted  with  gems 
which  are  to  be  seen  in  a certain  chapel  in 
Prague;  it  blazes  with  colour,  and  arabesques 
into  a thousand  fantastic  patterns. 

And  now  all  that  laboriously  acquired  mas- 
tery finds  at  last  its  use,  lending  itself  to  the 
new  spirit  with  a wonderful  docility.  At  last 
the  idea  which  is  beyond  reality  has  been  found, 
not  where  Des  Esseintes  sought  it,  and  a new 
meaning  comes  into  what  had  once  been 
scarcely  more  than  patient  and  wrathful  ob- 
servation. The  idea  is  there,  visible,  in  his 
cathedral,  like  the  sun  which  flashes  into  unity, 
into  meaning,  into  intelligible  beauty  the  be- 
wildering lozenges  of  colour,  the  inextricable 
trails  of  lead,  which  go  to  make  up  the  picture 
in  one  of  its  painted  windows.  What,  for 
instance,  could  be  more  precise  in  its  transla- 
tion of  the  different  aspects  under  which  the 
cathedral  of  Chartres  can  be  seen,  merely  as 
colour,  than  this  one  sentence:  “Seen  as  a 
whole,  under  a clear  sky,  its  grey  silvers,  and, 
if  the  sun  shines  upon  it,  turns  pale  yellow  and 
then  golden;  seen  close,  its  skin  is  like  that  of 
a nibbled  biscuit,  with  its  silicious  limestone 
eaten  into  holes;  sometimes,  when  the  sun  is 


276  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


setting,  it  turns  crimson,  and  rises  up  like  a 
monstrous  and  delicate  shrine,  rose  and  green; 
and,  at  twilight,  turns  blue,  then  seems  to 
evaporate  as  it  fades  into  violet.”  Or,  again, 
in  a passage  which  comes  nearer  to  the  con- 
ventional idea  of  eloquence,  how  absolute  an 
avoidance  of  a conventional  phrase,  a word 
used  for  its  merely  oratorical  value:  “High 
up,  in  space,  like  salamanders,  human  beings, 
with  burning  faces  and  flaming  robes,  lived  in  a 
firmament  of  fire;  but  these  conflagrations 
were  circumscribed,  limited  by  an  incombus- 
tible frame  of  darker  glass,  which  beat  back 
the  clear  young  joy  of  the  flames;  by  that  kind 
of  melancholy,  that  more  serious  and  more 
aged  aspect,  which  is  taken  by  the  duller  col- 
ours. The  hue  and  cry  of  reds,  the  limpid 
security  of  whites,  the  reiterated  halleluias 
of  yellows,  the  virginal  glory  of  blues,  all  the 
quivering  hearth-glow  of  painted  glass,  dies 
away  as  it  came  near  this  border  coloured  with 
the  rust  of  iron,  wdth  the  russet  of  sauce,  with 
the  harsh  violet  of  sandstone,  with  bottle- 
green,  with  the  brown  of  touchwood,  with 
sooty  black,  with  ashen  grey.” 

This,  in  its  excess  of  exactitude  (how  me- 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


277 


diseval  a quality!)  becomes,  on  one  page, 
a comparison  of  the  tower  without  a spire  to 
an  unsharpened  pencil  which  cannot  write 
the  prayers  of  earth  upon  the  sky.  But  for 
the  most  part  it  is  a consistent  humanising 
of  too  objectively  visible  things  a disengaging 
of  the  sentiment  which  exists  in  them,  which 
is  one  of  the  secrets  of  their  appeal  to  us,  but 
which  for  the  most  part  we  overlook  as  we 
set  ourselves  to  add  up  the  shapes  and  colours 
which  have  enchanted  us.  To  Huysmans  this 
artistic  discovery  has  come,  perhaps  in  the 
most  effectual  way,  but  certainly  in  the  way 
least  probable  in  these  days,  through  faith,  a 
definite  religious  faith;  so  that,  beginning 
tentatively,  he  has  come,  at  last,  to  believe  in 
the  Catholic  Church  as  a monk  of  the  Middle 
Ages  believed  in  it.  And  there  is  no  doubt 
that  to  Huysmans  this  abandonment  to  religion 
has  brought,  among  other  gifts,  a certain 
human  charity  in  which  he  was  notably  lacking, 
removing  at  once  one  of  his  artistic  limitations. 
It  has  softened  his  contempt  of  humanity;  it 
has  broadened  his  outlook  on  the  world.  And 
the  sense,  diffused  through  the  whole  of  this 
book,  of  the  living  and  beneficent  reality  of  the 


278  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Virgin,  of  her  real  presence  in  the  cathedral 
built  in  her  honour  and  after  her  own  image, 
brings  a strange  and  touching  kind  of  poetry 
into  these  closely  and  soberly  woven  pages. 

From  this  time  forward,  until  his  death, 
Huysmans  is  seen  purging  himself  of  his 
realism,  coming  closer  and  closer  to  that 
spiritual  Naturalism  which  he  had  invented, 
an  art  made  out  of  an  apprehension  of  the 
inner  meaning  of  those  things  which  he  still 
saw  with  the  old  tenacity  of  vision.  Nothing 
is  changed  in  him  and  yet  all  is  changed. 
The  disgust  of  the  world  deepens  through 
L’Oblat,  which  is  the  last  stage  but  one  in 
the  pilgrimage  which  begins  with  En  Route . 
It  seeks  an  escape  in  poring,  with  a dreadful 
diligence,  over  a saint’s  recorded  miracles,  in 
the  life  of  Sainte  Lydwine  de  Schiedam,  which 
is  mediaeval  in  its  precise  acceptance  of  every 
horrible  detail  of  the  story.  Les  Foules  de 
Lourdes  has  the  same  minute  attentiveness  to 
horror,  but  with  a new  pity  in  it,  and  a way  of 
giving  thanks  to  the  Virgin,  which  is  in  Huys- 
mans yet  another  escape  from  his  disgust  of 
the  world.  But  it  is  in  the  great  chapter  on 
Satan  as  the  creator  of  ugliness  that  his  work 


THE  LATER  HUYSMANS 


279 


seems  to  end  where  it  had  begun,  in  the  ser- 
vice of  art,  now  come  from  a great  way  off  to 
join  itself  with  the  service  of  God,  And  the 
whole  soul  of  Huysmans  characterises  itself  in 
the  turn  of  a single  phrase  there:  that  “art  is 
the  only  clean  thing  on  earth,  except  holiness.” 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


That  story  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  which  is 
at  the  same  time  a true  story,  the  life  of 
Rimbaud,  has  been  told,  for  the  first  time, 
in  the  extravagant  but  valuable  book  of  an 
anarchist  of  letters,  who  writes  under  the 
name  of  Paterae  Berrichon,  and  who  has  since 
married  Rimbaud’s  sister.  La  Vie  de  Jean- 
Arthur  Rimbaud  is  full  of  curiosity  for  those 
who  have  been  mystified  by  I know  not  what 
legends,  invented  to  give  wonder  to  a career, 
itself  more  wonderful  than  any  of  the  inven- 
tions. The  man  who  died  at  Marseilles,  at 
the  Hospital  of  the  Conception,  on  March  10, 
1891,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  negociant,  as 
the  register  of  his  death  describes  him,  was  a 
writer  of  genius,  an  innovator  in  verse  and 
prose,  who  had  written  all  his  poetry  by  the 
age  of  nineteen,  and  all  his  prose  by  a year  or 
two  later.  He  had  given  up  literature  to 
travel  hither  and  thither,  first  in  Europe,  then 
in  Africa;  he  had  been  an  engineer,  a leader  of 
2S0 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


281 


caravans,  a merchant  of  precious  merchandise. 
And  this  man,  who  had  never  written  down  a 
line  after  those  astonishing  early  experiments, 
was  heard,  in  his  last  delirium,  talking  of  pre- 
cisely such  visions  as  those  which  had  haunted 
his  youth,  and  using,  says  his  sister,  “ expres- 
sions of  a singular  and  penetrating  charm”  to 
render  these  sensations  of  visionary  countries. 
Here  certainly  is  one  of  the  most  curious  prob- 
lems of  literature:  is  it  a problem  of  which  we 
can  discover  the  secret? 

Jean-Nicolas- Arthur  Rimbaud  was  born  at 
Charleville,  in  the  Ardennes,  October  28,  1854. 
His  father,  of  whom  he  saw  little,  was  a cap- 
tain in  the  army;  his  mother,  of  peasant  origin, 
was  severe,  rigid  and  unsympathetic.  At 
school  he  was  an  unwilling  but  brilliant  scholar, 
and  by  his  fifteenth  year  was  well  acquainted 
with  Latin  literature  and  intimately  with 
French  literature.  It  was  in  that  year  that  he 
began  to  write  poems  from  the  first  curiously 
original:  eleven  poems  dating  from  that  year 
are  to  be  found  in  his  collected  works.  When 
he  was  sixteen  he  decided  that  he  had  had 
enough  of  school,  and  enough  of  home.  Only 
Paris  existed:  he  must  go  to  Paris.  The 


282  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


first  time  he  went  without  a ticket;  he  spent, 
indeed,  fifteen  days  in  Paris,  but  he  spent  them 
in  Mazas,  from  which  he  was  released  and 
restored  to  his  home  by  his  schoolmaster. 
The  second  time,  a few  days  later,  he  sold  his 
watch,  which  paid  for  his  railway  ticket. 
This  time  he  threw  himself  on  the  hospitality 
of  Andre  Gill,  a painter  and  verse-writer,  of 
some  little  notoriety  then,  whose  address  he 
had  happened  to  come  across.  The  unin- 
vited guest  was  not  welcomed,  and  after  some 
penniless  days  in  Paris  he  tramped  back  to 
Charleville.  The  third  time  (he  had  waited 
five  months,  writing  poems,  and  discontented 
to  be  only  wu-iting  poems)  he  made  his  way 
to  Paris  on  foot,  in  a heat  of  revolutionary 
sympathy,  to  offer  himself  to  the  insurgents 
of  the  Commune.  Again  he  had  to  return 
on  foot.  Finally,  having  learnt  with  diffi- 
culty that  a man  is  not  taken  at  his  own 
valuation  until  he  has  proved  his  right  to  be  so 
accepted,  he  sent  up  the  manuscript  of  his 
poems  to  Verlaine.  The  manuscript  con- 
tained Le  Bateau  Ivre,  Les  Premieres  Com- 
munions, Ma  Boheme,  Roman,  Les  Effares,  and, 
indeed,  all  but  a few  of  the  poems  he  ever 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


283 


wrote.  Verlaine  was  overwhelmed  with  de- 
light, and  invited  him  to  Paris.  A local  ad- 
mirer lent  him  the  money  to  get  there,  and 
from  October,  1871,  to  July,  1872,  he  was  Ver- 
laine’s guest. 

The  boy  of  seventeen,  already  a perfectly 
original  poet,  and  beginning  to  be  an  equally 
original  prose-writer,  astonished  the  whole 
Parnasse,  Banville,  Hugo  himself.  On  Ver- 
laine his  influence  was  more  profound.  The 
meeting  brought  about  one  of  those  lament- 
able and  admirable  disasters  which  make  and 
unmake  careers.  Verlaine  has  told  us  in  his 
Confessions  that,  “in  the  beginning,  there  was 
no  question  of  any  sort  of  affection  or  sym- 
pathy between  two  natures  so  different  as 
that  of  the  poet  of  the  Assis  and  mine,  but 
simply  of  an  extreme  admiration  and  astonish- 
ment before  this  boy  of  sixteen,  who  had 
already  written  things,  as  Feneon  has  excel- 
lently said,  ‘perhaps  outside  literature.’”  This 
admiration  and  astonishment  passed  gradu- 
ally into  a more  personal  feeling,  and  it  was 
under  the  influence  of  Rimbaud  that  the 
long  vagabondage  of  Verlaine’s  life  began. 
The  two  poets  wandered  together  through 


284  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Belgium,  England,  and  again  Belgium,  from 
July,  1872,  to  August,  1873,  when  there  oc- 
curred that  tragic  parting  at  Brussels  which 
left  Verlaine  a prisoner  for  eighteen  months, 
and  sent  Rimbaud  back  to  his  family.  He 
had  already  written  all  the  poetry  and  prose 
that  he  was  ever  to  write,  and  in  1873  he 
printed  at  Brussels  Une  Saison  en  Enfer. 
It  was  the  only  book  he  himself  ever  gave  to 
the  press,  and  no  sooner  was  it  printed  than  he 
destroyed  the  whole  edition,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a few  copies,  of  which  only  Verlaine’s 
copy,  I believe,  still  exists.  Soon  began  new 
wanderings,  with  their  invariable  return  to 
the  starting-point  of  Charleville : a few  days  in 
Paris,  a year  in  England,  four  months  in  Stutt- 
gart (where  he  was  visited  by  Verlaine),  Italy, 
France  again,  Vienna,  Java,  Holland,  Sweden, 
Egypt,  Cyprus,  Abyssinia,  and  then  nothing 
but  Africa,  until  the  final  return  to  France. 
He  had  been  a teacher  of  French  in  England,  a 
seller  of  key-rings  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  had 
unloaded  vessels  in  the  ports,  and  helped  to 
gather  in  the  harvest  in  the  country;  he  had 
been  a volunteer  in  the  Dutch  army,  a military 
engineer,  a trader;  and  now  physical  sciences 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


285 


had  begun  to  attract  his  insatiable  curiosity, 
and  dreams  of  the  fabulous  East  began  to 
resolve  themselves  into  dreams  of  a romantic 
commerce  with  the  real  East.  He  became  a 
merchant  of  coffee,  perfumes,  ivory,  and  gold, 
in  the  interior  of  Africa;  then  an  explorer,  a 
predecessor,  and  in  his  own  regions,  of  Mar- 
chand.  After  twelve  years’  wandering  and  ex- 
posure in  Africa  he  was  attacked  by  a malady 
of  the  knee,  which  rapidly  became  worse. 
He  was  transported  first  to  Aden,  then  to 
Marseilles,  where,  in  May,  1891,  his  leg  was 
amputated.  Further  complications  set  in.  He 
insisted,  first,  on  being  removed  to  his  home, 
then  on  being  taken  back  to  Marseilles.  His 
sufferings  were  an  intolerable  torment,  and 
more  cruel  to  him  was  the  torment  of  his  desire 
to  live.  He  died  inch  by  inch,  fighting  every 
inch;  and  his  sister’s  quiet  narrative  of  those 
last  months  is  agonising.  He  died  at  Mar- 
seilles in  November,  “prophesying,”  says  his 
sister,  and  repeating,  “Allah  Kerim!  Allah 
Kerim!” 

The  secret  of  Rimbaud,  I think,  and  the 
reason  why  he  was  able  to  do  the  unique 
thing  in  literature  which  he  did,  and  then 


286  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


to  disappear  quietly  and  become  a legend  in 
the  East,  is  that  his  mind  was  not  the  mind 
of  the  artist  but  of  the  man  of  action.  He 
was  a dreamer,  but  all  his  dreams  were  dis- 
coveries. To  him  it  was  an  identical  act  of 
his  temperament  to  write  the  sonnet  of  the 
Vowels  and  to  trade  in  ivory  and  frankin- 
cense with  the  Arabs.  He  lived  with  all  his 
faculties  at  every  instant  of  his  life,  aban- 
doning himself  to  himself  with  a confidence 
which  was  at  once  his  strength  and  (looking 
at  things  less  absolutely)  his  weakness.  To 
the  student  of  success,  and  what  is  relative 
in  achievement,  he  illustrates  the  danger  of 
one’s  over-possession  by  one’s  own  genius, 
just  as  aptly  as  the  saint  in  the  cloister  does, 
or  the  mystic  too  full  of  God  to  speak  intel- 
ligibly to  the  world,  or  the  spilt  wisdom  of 
the  drunkard.  The  artist  who  is  above  all 
things  an  artist  cultivates  a little  choice  corner 
of  himself  with  elaborate  care;  he  brings 
miraculous  flowers  to  growth  there,  but  the 
rest  of  the  garden  is  but  mown  grass  or  tan- 
gled bushes.  That  is  why  many  excellent 
writers,  very  many  painters,  and  most  musi- 
cians are  so  tedious  on  any  subject  but  their 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


287 


own.  Is  it  not  tempting,  does  it  not  seem  a 
devotion  rather  than  a superstition,  to  wor- 
ship the  golden  chalice  in  which  the  wine  has 
been  made  God,  as  if  the  chalice  were  the 
reality,  and  the  jReal  Presence  the  symbol? 
The  artist,  who  is  only  an  artist,  circumscribes 
his  intelligence  into  almost  such  a fiction,  as 
he  reverences  the  work  of  his  own  hands.  But 
there  are  certain  natures  (great  or  small, 
Shakespeare  or  Rimbaud,  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence) to  whom  the  work  is  nothing;  the  act 
of  working,  everything.  Rimbaud  was  a small, 
narrow,  hard,  precipitate  nature,  which  had 
the  will  to  live,  and  nothing  but  the  will  to  five; 
and  his  verses,  and  his  follies,  and  his  wander- 
ings, and  his  traffickings  were  but  the  breath- 
ing of  different  hours  in  his  day. 

That  is  why  he  is  so  swift,  definite,  and 
quickly  exhausted  in  vision;  why  he  had  his 
few  things  to  say,  each  an  action  with  con- 
sequences. He  invents  new  ways  of  saying 
things,  not  because  he  is  a learned  artist,  but 
because  he  is  burning  to  say  them,  and  he 
has  none  of  the  hesitations  of  knowledge. 
He  leaps  right  over  or  through  the  conven- 
tions that  had  been  standing  in  everybody’s 


288  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


way;  he  has  no  time  to  go  round,  and  no 
respect  for  trespass-boards,  and  so  he  becomes 
the  enfant  terrible  of  literature,  playing  pranks 
(as  in  that  sonnet  of  the  Vowels ),  knocking 
down  barriers  for  the  mere  amusement  of  the 
thing,  getting  all  the  possible  advantage  of 
his  barbarisms  in  mind  and  conduct.  And 
so,  in  life,  he  is  first  of  all  conspicuous  as  a dis- 
orderly liver,  a revolter  against  morals  as 
against  prosody,  though  we  may  imagine  that, 
in  his  heart,  morals  meant  as  little  to  him,  one 
way  or  the  other,  as  prosody.  Later  on,  his 
revolt  seems  to  be  against  civilisation  itself,  as 
he  disappears  into  the  deserts  of  Africa.  And 
it  is,  if  you  like,  a revolt  against  civilisation, 
but  the  revolt  is  instinctive,  a need  of  the 
organism.;  it  is  not  doctrinal,  cynical,  a con- 
viction, a sentiment. 

Always,  as  he  says  revant  univers  fantas- 
tiques,  he  is  conscious  of  the  danger  as  well  as 
the  ecstasy  of  that  divine  imitation;  for  he 
says:  “My  life  will  always  be  too  vast  to  be 
given  up  wholly  to  force  and  beauty.”  J’ attends 
Dieu  avec  gounnandise,  he  cries,  in  a fine  rap- 
ture; and  then,  sadly  enough:  “I  have  cre- 
ated all  the  feasts,  all  the  triumphs,  all  the 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


289 


dramas  of  the  world.  I have  set  myself  to 
invent  new  flowers,  a new  flesh,  a new  lan- 
guage. I have  fancied  that  I have  attained 
supernatural  power.  Well,  I have  now  only  to 
put  my  imagination  and  my  memories  in  the 
grave.  What  a fine  artist’s  and  story-teller’s 
fame  thrown  away!”  See  how  completely  he 
is  conscious,  and  how  completely  he  is  at  the 
mercy,  of  that  hallucinatory  rage  of  vision, 
vision  to  him  being  always  force,  power,  cre- 
ation, which,  on  some  of  his  pages,  seems  to 
become  sheer  madness,  and  on  others  a kind 
of  wild  but  absolute  insight.  He  will  be  silent, 
he  tells  us,  as  to  all  that  he  contains  within  his 
mind,  “greedy  as  the  sea,”  for  otherwise  poets 
and  visionaries  would  envy  him  his  fantastic 
wealth.  And,  in  that  Nuit  d’Enfer,  which  does 
not  bear  that  title  in  vain,  he  exalts  himself  as 
a kind  of  saviour;  he  is  in  the  circle  of  pride  in 
Dante’s  hell,  and  he  has  lost  all  sense  of  limit, 
really  believes  himself  to  be  “no  one  and 
some  one.”  Then,  in  the  Alchimie  du  Verbe, 
he  becomes  the  analyst  of  his  own  hallucina- 
tions. “I  believe  in  all  the  enchantments,” 
he  tells  us;  “I  invented  the  colour  of  the 
vowels;  A,  black;  E,  white;  I,  red;  O,  blue; 


290  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


U,  green.  I regulated  the  form  and  the  move- 
ment of  every  consonant,  and,  with  instinctive 
rhythms,  I flattered  myself  that  I had  in- 
vented a poetic  language  accessible,  one  day  or 
another,  to  every  shade  of  meaning.  I re- 
served to  myself  the  right  of  translation1 

1 Here  is  the  famous  sonnet,  which  must  be  taken,  as  it 
was  meant,  without  undue  seriousness,  and  yet  as  something 
more  than  a mere  joke. 

VOYELLES 

A noir,  E blanc,  I rouge,  U vert,  0 bleu,  voyelles, 

Je  dirai  quelque  jour  vos  naissances  latentes. 

A,  noir  corset  velu  des  mouches  eclatantes 
Qui  bombillent  autour  des  puanteurs  cruelles, 

Golfe  d’ombre;  E,  candour  des  vapeurs  et  des  tentes, 
Lance  des  glaciers  fiers,  rois  blancs,  frissons  d’ombelles; 
I,  pourpres,  sang  crach<§,  rire  des  levres  belles 
Dans  la  colere  ou  les  ivresses  penitentes; 

U,  cycles,  vibrements  divins  des  mers  virides, 

Paix  des  patis  semes  d’animaux,  paix  des  rides 
Que  l’alchemie  imprime  aux  grands  fronts  studieux; 

O,  supreme  clairon  plein  de  strideurs  Stranges, 

Silences  traverses  des  mondes  et  des  Anges; 

— O l’Omega,  rayon  violet  de  Ses  Yeux! 

Coincidence  or  origin,  it  has  lately  been  pointed  out  that 
Rimbaud  may  formerly  have  seen  an  old  ABC  book  in  which 
the  vowels  are  coloured  for  the  most  part  as  his  are  (A,  black ; 
E,  white;  I,  red;  0,  blue;  U,  green).  In  the  little  illus- 
trative pictures  around  them  some  are  oddly  in  keeping 
with  the  image  of  Rimbaud. 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


291 


...  I accustomed  myself  to  simple  hallucina- 
tion: I saw,  quite  frankly,  a mosque  in  place 
of  a factory,  a school  of  drums  kept  by  the 
angels,  post-chaises  on  the  roads  of  heaven, 
a drawing-room  at  the  bottom  of  a lake; 
monsters,  mysteries;  the  title  of  a vaudeville 
raised  up  horrors  before  me.  Then  I ex- 
plained my  magical  sophisms  by  the  hallucina- 
tion of  words!  I ended  by  finding  something 
sacred  in  the  disorder  of  my  mind.”  Then 
he  makes  the  great  discovery.  Action,  one 
sees,  this  fraudulent  and  insistent  will  to  live, 
has  been  at  the  root  of  all  these  mental  and 
verbal  orgies,  in  which  he  has  been  wasting 
the„  very  substance  of  his  thought.  Well, 
“action,”  he  discovers,  “is  not  life,  but  a 
way  of  spoiling  something.”  Even  this  is  a 
form  of  enervation,  and  must  be  rejected  from 
the  absolute.  Mon  devoir  mlest  remis.  II  ne 
faut  plus  songer  a cela.  Je  suis  reeUement 
d’outre-tombe,  et  pas  de  commissions. 

It  is  for  the  absolute  that  he  seeks,  always; 
the  absolute  which  the  great  artist,  with  his 
careful  wisdom,  has  renounced  seeking.  And 
he  is  content  with  nothing  less;  hence  his  own 
contempt  for  what  he  has  done,  after  all, 


292  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


so  easily;  for  what  has  come  to  him,  perhaps 
through  his  impatience,  but  imperfectly.  He 
is  a dreamer  in  whom  dream  is  swift,  hard  in 
outline,  coming  suddenly  and  going  suddenly, 
a real  thing,  but  seen  only  in  passing.  Visions 
rush  past  him,  he  cannot  arrest  them;  they 
rush  forth  from  him,  he  cannot  restrain  their 
haste  to  be  gone,  as  he  creates  them  in  the 
mere  indiscriminate  idleness  of  energy.  And 
so  this  seeker  after  the  absolute  leaves  but 
a broken  medley  of  fragments,  into  each  of 
which  he  has  put  a little  of  his  personality, 
which  he  is  forever  dramatising,  by  multi- 
plying one  facet,  so  to  speak,  after  another. 
Very  genuinely,  he  is  now  a beaten  and  wan- 
dering ship,  flying  in  a sort  of  intoxication 
before  the  wind,  over  undiscovered  seas;  now 
a starving  child  outside  a baker’s  window,  in 
the  very  ecstasy  of  hunger;  now  la  victime  et  la 
petite  epouse  of  the  first  communion;  now: 

Je  ne  parlerai  pas,  je  ne  penserai  rien; 

Mais  l’amour  infini  me  montera  dans  l'ame, 

Et  j’irai  loin,  bien  loin,  comme  un  bohemien, 

Par  la  Nature,  heureux  comme  avec  une  femme! 

He  catches  at  verse,  at  prose,  invents  a 
sort  of  vers  libre  before  any  one  else,  not 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


293 


quite  knowing  what  to  do  with  it,  invents 
a quite  new  way  of  writing  prose,  which 
Laforgue  will  turn  to  account  later  on;  and 
having  suggested,  with  some  impatience,  half 
the  things  that  his  own  and  the  next  genera- 
tion are  to  busy  themselves  with  developing, 
he  gives  up  writing,  as  an  inadequate  form, 
to  which  he  is  also  inadequate. 

What,  then,  is  the  actual  value  of  Rim- 
baud’s work,  in  verse  and  prose,  apart  from 
its  relative  values  of  so  many  kinds?  I 
think,  considerable;  though  it  will  probably 
come  to  rest  on  two  or  three  pieces  of  verse, 
and  a still  vaguer  accomplishment  in  prose. 
He  brought  into  French  verse  something  of 
that  “gipsy  way  of  going  with  nature,  as 
with  a woman”;  a very  young,  very  crude, 
very  defiant  and  sometimes  very  masterly 
sense  of  just  these  real  things  which  are  too 
close  to  us  to  be  seen  by  most  people  with 
any  clearness.  He  could  render  physical  sen- 
sation, of  the  subtlest  kind,  without  making 
any  compromise  with  language,  forcing  lan- 
guage to  speak  straight,  taming  it  as  one  would 
tame  a dangerous  animal.  And  he  kneaded 
prose  as  he  kneaded  verse,  making  it  a dis- 


294  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


articulated,  abstract,  mathematically  lyrical 
thing.  In  verse,  he  pointed  the  way  to  cer- 
tain new  splendours,  as  to  certain  new  nai- 
vetes', there  is  the  Bateau  lure,  without  which 
we  might  never  have  had  Verlaine’s  Crimen 
Amoris.  And,  intertangled  with  what  is  in- 
genuous, and  with  what  is  splendid,  there  is  a 
certain  irony,  which  comes  into  that  youth- 
ful work  as  if  youth  were  already  reminiscent 
of  itself,  so  conscious  is  it  that  youth  is  youth,, 
and  that  youth  is  passing. 

In  all  these  ways,  Rimbaud  had  his  in- 
fluence upon  Verlaine,  and  his  influence  upon 
Verlaine  was  above  all  the  influence  of  the 
man  of  action  upon  the  man  of  sensation; 
the  influence  of  what  is  simple,  narrow, 
emphatic,  upon  what  is  subtle,  complex, 
growing.  Verlaine’s  rich,  sensitive  nature  was 
just  then  trying  to  realise  itself.  Just  because 
it  had  such  delicate  possibilities,  because 
there  were  so  many  directions  in  which  it 
could  grow,  it  was  not  at  first  quite  sure  of 
its  way.  Rimbaud  came  into  the  life  and 
art  of  Verlaine,  troubling  both,  with  that 
trouble  which  reveals  a man  to  himself. 
Having  helped  to  make  Verlaine  a great 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 


295 


poet,  he  could  go.  Note  that  he  himself 
could  never  have  developed:  writing  had 
been  one  of  his  discoveries;  he  could  but 
make  other  discoveries,  personal  ones.  Even 
in  literature  he  had  his  future;  but  his  future 
was  Verlaine. 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


Jules  Laforgue  was  born  at  Montevideo, 
of  Breton  parents,  August  20,  1860.  He  died 
in  Paris  in  1887,  two  days  before  his  twenty- 
seventh  birthday.  From  1880  to  1886  he 
had  been  reader  to  the  Empress  Augusta  at 
Berlin.  He  married  only  a few  months  be- 
fore his  death.  D’allures?  says  M.  Gustave 
Kahn,  fort  correctes,  de  hauls  gibus,  des  cra- 
vates  sobres,  des  vestons  anglais,  des  pardessus 
clergymans,  et  de  par  les  necessites,  un  para- 
pluie  immuablement  place  sous  le  bras.  His 
portraits  show  us  a clean-shaved,  reticent 
face,  betraying  little.  With  such  a person- 
ality anecdotes  have  but  small  chance  of 
appropriating  those  details  by  which  ex- 
pansive natures  express  themselves  to  the 
world.  We  know  nothing  about  Laforgue 
which  his  work  is  not  better  able  to  tell  us, 
even  now  that  we  have  all  his  notes,  un- 
finished fragments,  and  the  letters  of  an 
almost  virginal  naivete  which  he  wrote  to 
296 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


297 


the  woman  whom  he  was  going  to  marry. 
His  entire  work,  apart  from  these  additions, 
is  contained  in  two  small  volumes,  one  of 
prose,  the  Moralites  Legendaires,  the  other 
of  verse,  Les  Complaintes,  limitation  de 
Notre-Dame  la  Lune,  and  a few  other  pieces, 
all  published  during  the  last  three  years  of 
his  life. 

The  prose  and  verse  of  Laforgue,  scrupu- 
lously correct,  but  with  a new  manner  of 
correctness,  owe  more  than  any  one  has  real- 
ised to  the  half-unconscious  prose  and  verse 
of  Rimbaud.  Verse  and  prose  are  alike  a 
kind  of  travesty,  making  subtle  use  of  collo- 
quialism, slang,  neologism,  technical  terms, 
for  their  allusive,  their  factitious,  their  re- 
flected meanings,  with  which  one  can  play, 
very  seriously.  The  verse  is  alert,  troubled, 
swaying,  deliberately  uncertain,  hating  rhet- 
oric so  piously  that  it  prefers,  and  finds  its 
piquancy  in,  the  ridiculously  obvious.  It  is 
really  vers  libre,  but  at  the  same  time  correct 
verse,  before  vers  libre  had  been  invented. 
And  it  carries,  as  far  as  that  theory  has 
ever  been  carried,  the  theory  which  demands 
an  instantaneous  notation  (Whistler,  let  us 


298  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 

say)  of  the  figure  or  landscape  which  one 
has  been  accustomed  to  define  with  such 
rigorous  exactitude.  Verse,  always  elegant,  is 
broken  up  into  a kind  of  mockery  of  prose. 

Encore  un  de  mes  pierrots  mort; 

Mort  d’un  chronique  orphelinisme; 

C’6tait  un  coeur  plein  de  dandysme 
Lunaire,  en  un  drole  de  corps; 

he  will  say  to  us,  with  a familiarity  of  man- 
ner, as  of  one  talking  languidly,  in  a low 
voice,  the  lips  always  teased  into  a slightly 
bitter  smile;  and  he  will  pass  suddenly  into 
the  ironical  lilt  of 

Hotel  garni 
De  l’infini, 

Sphinx  et  Joconde 
Des  defunts  mondes; 

and  from  that  into  this  solemn  and  smil- 
ing end  of  one  of  his  last  poems,  his  own 
epitaph,  if  you  will: 

II  prit  froid  l’autre  automne, 

S’etant  attardi  vers  les  peines  des  cors, 

Sur  la  fin  d’un  beau  jour. 

Oh!  ce  fut  pour  vos  cors,  et  ce  fut  pour  l’automne. 

Qu’il  nous  montra  qu’  “on  meurt  d’amour!” 

On  ne  le  verra  plus  aux  fetes  nationales, 

S’enfermer  dans  l’Histoire  et  tirer  les  verrous, 

II  vint  trop  tard,  il  est  reparti  sans  scandale; 

0 vous  qui  m’ecoutez,  rentrez  chacun  chez  vous. 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


299 


The  old  cadences,  the  old  eloquence,  the 
ingenuous  seriousness  of  poetry,  are  all  ban- 
ished, on  a theory  as  self-denying  as  that 
which  permitted  Degas  to  dispense  with 
recognisable  beauty  in  his  figures.  Here,  if 
ever,  is  modern  verse,  verse  which  dispenses 
with  so  many  of  the  privileges  of  poetry,  for 
an  ideal  quite  of  its  own.  It  is,  after  all, 
a very  self-conscious  ideal,  becoming  arti- 
ficial through  its  extreme  naturalness;  for 
in  poetry  it  is  not  “natural”  to  say  things 
quite  so  much  in  the  manner  of  the  moment, 
with  however  ironical  an  intention. 

The  prose  of  the  Moralites  Legendaires  is 
perhaps  even  more  of  a discovery.  Finding 
its  origin,  as  I have  pointed  out,  in  the  ex- 
perimental prose  of  Rimbaud,  it  carries  that 
manner  to  a singular  perfection.  Disartic- 
ulated, abstract,  mathematically  lyrical,  it 
gives  expression,  in  its  icy  ecstasy,  to  a 
very  subtle  criticism  of  the  universe,  with 
a surprising  irony  of  cosmical  vision.  We 
learn  from  books  of  mediaeval  magic  that 
the  embraces  of  the  devil  are  of  a coldness 
so  intense  that  it  may  be  called,  by  an  allow- 
able figure  of  speech,  fiery.  Everything  may 


300  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


be  as  strongly  its  opposite  as  itself,  and  that 
is  why  this  balanced,  chill,  colloquial  style 
of  Laforgue  has,  in  the  paradox  of  its  in- 
tensity, the  essential  heat  of  the  most  ob- 
viously emotional  prose.  The  prose  is  more 
patient  than  the  verse,  with  its  more  com- 
passionate laughter  at  universal  experience. 
It  can  laugh  as  seriously,  as  profoundly, 
as  in  that  graveyard  monologue  of  Hamlet, 
Laforgue’s  Hamlet,  who,  Maeterlinck  ven- 
tures to  say,  “is  at  moments  more  Hamlet 
than  the  Hamlet  of  Shakespeare.”  Let  me 
translate  a few  sentences  from  it. 

“Perhaps  I have  still  twenty  or  thirty 
years  to  live,  and  I shall  pass  that  way  like 
the  others.  Like  the  others?  0 Totality, 
the  misery  of  being  there  no  longer!  Ah! 
I would  like  to  set  out  to-morrow,  and  search 
all  through  the  world  for  the  most  adaman- 
tine processes  of  embalming.  They,  too,  were, 
the  little  people  of  History,  learning  to  read, 
trimming  their  nails,  lighting  the  dirty  lamp 
every  evening,  in  love,  gluttonous,  vain,  fond 
of  compliments,  handshakes,  and  kisses,  living 
on  bell-tower  gossip,  saying,  ‘What  sort  of 
weather  shall  we  have  to-morrow?  Winter 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


301 


has  really  come.  ...  We  have  had  no  plums 
this  year.’  Ah!  everything  is  good,  if  it  would 
not  come  to  an  end.  And  thou,  Silence, 
pardon  the  Earth;  the  little  madcap  hardly 
knows  what  she  is  doing;  on  the  day  of  the 
great  summing-up  of  consciousness  before  the 
Ideal,  she  will  be  labelled  with  a pitiful  idem 
in  the  column  of  the  miniature  evolutions 
of  the  Unique  Evolution,  in  the  column 
of  negligeable  quantities.  . . . To  die!  Evi- 
dently, one  dies  without  knowing  it,  as, 
every  night,  one  enters  upon  sleep.  One 
has  no  consciousness  of  the  passing  of  the 
last  lucid  thought  into  sleep,  into  swooning, 
into  death.  Evidently.  But  to  be  no  more, 
to  be  here  no  more,  to  be  ours  no  more! 
Not  even  to  be  able,  any  more,  to  press 
against  one’s  human  heart,  some  idle  after- 
noon, the  ancient  sadness  contained  in  one 
little  chord  on  the  piano!” 

In  these  always  “lunar”  parodies,  Salome, 
Lohengrin,  Fils  de  Parsifal,  Persee  et  An- 
dromeda, each  a kind  of  metaphysical  myth, 
he  realises  that  la  creature  va  hardiment  a 
etre  cerebrale,  anti-naturelle,  and  he  has  in- 
vented these  fantastic  puppets  with  an  al- 


302  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


most  Japanese  art  of  spiritual  dislocation. 
They  are,  in  part,  a way  of  taking  one’s 
revenge  upon  science,  by  an  ironical  borrow- 
ing of  its  very  terms,  which  dance  in  his 
prose  and  verse,  derisively,  at  the  end  of  a 
string. 

In  his  acceptance  of  the  fragility  of  things 
as  actually  a principle  of  art,  Laforgue  is  a 
sort  of  transformed  Watteau,  showing  his 
disdain  for  the  world  which  fascinates  him, 
in  quite  a different  way.  He  has  constructed 
his  own  world,  lunar  and  actual,  speaking 
slang  and  astronomy,  with  a constant  dis- 
engaging of  the  visionary  aspect,  under  which 
frivolity  becomes  an  escape  from  the  arro- 
gance of  a still  more  temporary  mode  of 
being,  the  world  as  it  appears  to  the  sober 
majority.  He  is  terribly  conscious  of  daily 
life,  cannot  omit,  mentally,  a single  hour  of 
the  day;  and  his  flight  to  the  moon  is  in  sheer 
desperation.  He  sees  what  he  calls  Vlncon- 
scient  in  every  gesture,  but  he  cannot  see  it 
without  these  gestures.  And  he  sees,  not  only 
as  an  imposition,  but  as  a conquest,  the  pos- 
sibilities for  art  which  come  from  the  sickly 
modern  being,  with  his  clothes,  his  nerves: 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


303 


the  mere  fact  that  he  flowers  from  the  soil  of 
his  epoch. 

It  is  an  art  of  the  nerves,  this  art  of  La- 
forgue, and  if  is  what  all  art  would  tend 
towards  if  we  followed  our  nerves  on  all 
their  journeys.  There  is  in  it  all  the  rest- 
lessness of  modern  life,  the  haste  to  escape 
from  whatever  weighs  too  heavily  on  the 
liberty  of  the  moment,  that  capricious  liberty 
which  demands  only  room  enough  to  hurry 
itself  weary.  It  is  distressingly  conscious  of 
the  unhappiness  of  mortality,  but  it  plays, 
somewhat  uneasily,  at  a disdainful  indiffer- 
ence. And  it  is  out  of  these  elements  of 
caprice,  fear,  contempt,  linked  together  by 
an  embracing  laughter,  that  it  makes  its 
existence. 

II  n'y  a pas  de  type,  il  y a la  vie,  Laforgue 
replies  to  those  who  come  to  him  with  classi- 
cal ideals.  Votre  ideal  est  Men  vite  magni- 
fiquement  submerge,  in  life  itself,  which  should 
form  its  own  art,  an  art  deliberately  ephem- 
eral, with  the  attaching  pathos  of  passing 
things.  There  is  a great  pity  at  the  root 
of  this  art  of  Laforgue:  self-pity,  which 
extends,  with  the  artistic  sympathy,  through 


304  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


mere  clearness  of  vision,  across  the  world. 
His  laughter,  which  Maeterlinck  has  defined 
so  admirably  as  “the  laughter  of  the  soul,” 
is  the  laughter  of  Pierrot,  more  than  half  a 
sob,  and  shaken  out  of  him  with  a deplorable 
gesture  of  the  thin  arms,  thrown  wide.  He  is 
a metaphysical  Pierrot,  Pierrot  lunaire,  and 
it  is  of  abstract  notions,  the  whole  science  of 
the  unconscious,  that  he  makes  his  showman’s 
patter.  As  it  is  part  of  his  manner  not  to 
distinguish  between  irony  and  pity,  or  even 
belief,  we  need  not  attempt  to  do  so.  Heine 
should  teach  us  to  understand  at  least  so 
much  of  a poet  who  could  not  otherwise 
resemble  him  less.  In  Laforgue,  sentiment 
is  squeezed  out  of  the  world  before  one  begins 
to  play  at  ball  with  it. 

And  so,  of  the  two,  he  is  the  more  hope- 
less. He  has  invented  a new  manner  of 
being  Rene  or  Werther:  an  inflexible  polite- 
ness towards  man,  woman,  and  destiny.  He 
composes  love-poems  hat  in  hand,  and  smiles 
with  an  exasperating  tolerance  before  all 
the  transformations  of  the  eternal  feminine. 
He  is  very  conscious  of  death,  but  his  blague 
of  death  is,  above  all  things,  gentlemanly. 


JULES  LAFORGUE 


305 


He  will  not  permit  himself,  at  any  moment, 
the  luxury  of  dropping  the  mask:  not  at 
any  moment. 

Read  this  Autre  Complaints  de  Lord  Pierrot, 
with  the  singular  pity  of  its  cruelty,  before 
such  an  imagined  dropping  of  the  mask: 

Celle  qui  doit  me  mettre  au  courant  de  la  Femme! 

Nous  lui  dirons  d’abord,  de  mon  air  le  moms  froid: 

“La  somme  des  angles  d’un  triangle,  chere  ame, 

Est  egale  a deux  droits.” 

Et  si  ce  cri  lui  part:  “Dieu  de  Dieu  que  je  t’aime!” 

— “Dieu  reconnaitra  les  siens.”  Ou  piquee  au  vif: 

— “Mes  claviers  ont  du  cceur,  tu  sera  mon  seul  theme.” 
Mai'  “Tout  est  relatif.” 

De  tous  ses  yeux,  alors!  se  sentant  trop  banale: 

“Ah!  tu  ne  m’aime  pas;  tant  d’autres  sont  jaloux!” 

Et  moi,  d’un  oeil  qui  vers  1’Inconscient  s’emballe: 

“Merci,  pas  mal;  et  vous? 

“Jouons  au  plus  fidele!” — A quoi  bon,  6 Nature! 

“Autant  & qui  perd  gagne.”  Alors,  autre  couplet. 

— “Ah!  tu  te  lasseras  le  premier,  j’en  suis  sftre.” 

— “Apres  vous,  s’il  vous  plait.” 

Enfins,  si,  par  un  soir,  elle  meurt  dans  mes  livres, 

Douce;  feignant  de  n’en  pas  croire  encor  mes  yeux, 
J’aurai  un:  “Ah  5a,  mais,  nous  avions  De  Quoi  vivre! 
C’etait  done  scrieux?  ” 


And  yet  one  realises,  if  one  but  reads  him 
attentively  enough,  how  much  suffering  and 


306  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


despair,  and  resignation  to  what  is,  after  all, 
the  inevitable,  are  hidden  away  under  this 
disguise,  and  also  why  this  disguise  is  possible. 
Laforgue  died  at  twenty-seven:  he  had  been 
a dying  man  all  his  life,  and  his  work  has  the 
fatal  evasiveness  of  those  who  shrink  from 
remembering  the  one  thing  which  they  are 
unable  to  forget.  Coming  as  he  does  after 
Rimbaud,  turning  the  divination  of  the  other 
into  theories,  into  achieved  results,  he  is  the 
eternally  grown  up,  mature  to  the  point  of 
self-negation,  as  the  other  is  the  eternal 
enfant  terrible.  He  thinks  intensely  about 
life,  seeing  what  is  automatic,  pathetically 
ludicrous  in  it,  almost  as  one  might  who  has 
no  part  in  the  comedy.  He  has  the  double 
advantage,  for  his  art,  of  being  condemned 
to  death,  and  of  being,  in  the  admirable  phrase 
of  Villiers,  “one  of  those  who  come  into  the 
world  with  a ray  of  moonlight  in  their  brains.” 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC 


The  secret  of  things  which  is  just  beyond 
the  most  subtle  words,  the  secret  of  the  ex- 
pressive silences,  has  always  been  clearer  to 
Maeterlinck  than  to  most  people;  and,  in 
his  plays,  he  has  elaborated  an  art  of  sensi- 
tive, tactiturn,  and  at  the  same  time  highly 
ornamental  simplicity,  which  has  come  nearer 
than  any  other  art  to  being  the  voice  of 
silence.  To  Maeterlinck  the  theatre  has  been, 
for  the  most  part,  no  more  than  one  of  the 
disguises  by  which  he  can  express  himself, 
and  with  his  book  of  meditations  on  the 
inner  life,  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles,  he  may 
seem  to  have  dropped  his  disguise. 

All  art  hates  the  vague;  not  the  mysteri- 
ous, but  the  vague;  two  opposites  very 
commonly  confused,  as  the  secret  with  the 
obscure,  the  infinite  with  the  indefinite.  And 
the  artist  who  is  also  a mystic  hates  the 
vague  with  a more  profound  hatred  than 
any  other  artist.  Thus  Maeterlinck,  endea- 
307 


308  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


vouring  to  clothe  mystical  conceptions  in 
concrete  form,  has  invented  a drama  so 
precise,  so  curt,  so  arbitrary  in  its  limits, 
that  it  can  safely  be  confided  to  the  masks 
and  feigned  voices  of  marionettes.  His 
theatre  of  artificial  beings,  who  are  at  once 
more  ghostly  and  more  mechanical  than  the 
living  actors  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  see, 
in  so  curious  a parody  of  life,  moving  with 
a certain  freedom  of  action  across  the  stage, 
may  be  taken  as  itself  a symbol  of  the  aspect 
under  which  what  we  fantastically  term  “real 
life”  presents  itself  to  the  mystic.  Are  we 
not  all  puppets,  in  a theatre  of  marionettes, 
in  which  the  parts  we  play,  the  dresses  we 
wear,  the  very  emotion  whose  dominance 
gives  its  express  form  to  our  faces,  have  all 
been  chosen  for  us;  in  which  I,  it  may  be, 
with  curled  hair  and  a Spanish  cloak,  play 
the  romantic  lover,  sorely  against  my  will, 
while  you,  a “fair  penitent”  for  no  repented 
sin,  pass  quietly  under  a nun’s  habit?  And 
as  our  parts  have  been  chosen  for  us,  our 
motions  controlled  from  behind  the  curtain, 
so  the  words  we  seem  to  speak  are  but  spoken 
through  us,  and  we  do  but  utter  fragments 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  309 


of  some  elaborate  invention,  planned  for  larger 
ends  than  our  personal  display  or  convenience, 
but  to  which,  all  the  same,  we  are  in  a humble 
degree  necessary.  This  symbolical  theatre, 
its  very  existence  being  a symbol,  has  per- 
plexed many  minds,  to  some  of  whom  it  has 
seemed  puerile,  a child’s  mystification  of  small 
words  and  repetitions,  a thing  of  attitudes 
and  omissions;  while  others,  yet  more  un- 
wisely, have  compared  it  with  the  violent, 
rhetorical,  most  human  drama  of  the  Eliza- 
bethans, with  Shakespeare  himself,  to  whom 
all  the  world  was  a stage,  and  the  stage  all 
this  world,  certainly.  A sentence,  already 
famous,  of  the  Tresor  des  Humbles , will  tell 
you  what  it  signifies  to  Maeterlinck  himself. 

“I  have  come  to  believe,”  he  writes,  in 
Le  Tragique  Quotidien,  “that  an  old  man 
seated  in  his  armchair,  waiting  quietly  under 
the  lamplight,  listening  without  knowing  it 
to  all  the  eternal  laws  which  reign  about  his 
house,  interpreting  without  understanding  it 
all  that  there  is  in  the  silence  of  doors  and 
windows,  and  in  the  little  voice  of  light,  en- 
during the  presence  of  his  soul  and  of  his 
destiny,  bowing  his  head  a little,  without 


310  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


suspecting  that  all  the  powers  of  the  earth 
intervene  and  stand  on  guard  in  the  room  like 
attentive  servants,  not  knowing  that  the  sun 
itself  suspends  above  the  abyss  the  little  table 
on  which  he  rests  his  elbow,  and  that  there  is 
not  a star  in  the  sky  nor  a force  in  the  soul 
which  is  indifferent  to  the  motion  of  a fall- 
ing eyelid  or  a rising  thought — I have  come 
to  believe  that  this  motionless  old  man 
lived  really  a more  profound,  human,  and 
universal  life  than  the  lover  who  strangles 
his  mistress,  the  captain  who  gains  a victory, 
or  the  husband  who  ‘avenges  his  honour.’” 

That,  it  seems  to  me,  says  all  there  is 
to  be  said  of  the  intention  of  this  drama 
which  Maeterlinck  has  evoked;  and,  of  its 
style,  this  other  sentence,  which  I take  from 
the  same  essay:  “It  is  only  the  words  that 
at  first  sight  seem  useless  which  really  count 
in  a work.” 

This  drama,  then,  is  a drama  founded  on 
philosophical  ideas,  apprehended  emotionally; 
on  the  sense  of  the  mystery  of  the  universe, 
of  the  weakness  of  humanity,  that  sense  which 
Pascal  expressed  when  he  said:  Ce  qui  rrietonne 
le  plus  est  de  voir  que  tout  le  monde  n’est  pas 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  311 


etonne  de  sa  faiblesse;  with  an  acute  feeling 
of  the  pathetic  ignorance  in  which  the  souls 
nearest  to  one  another  look  out  upon  their 
neighbours.  It  is  a drama  in  which  the  inter- 
est is  concentrated  on  vague  people,  who  are 
little  parts  of  the  universal  consciousness, 
their  strange  names  being  but  the  pseudonyms 
of  obscure  passions,  intimate  emotions.  They 
have  the  fascination  which  we  find  in  the  eyes 
of  certain  pictures,  so  much  more  real  and 
disquieting,  so  much  more  permanent  with 
us,  than  living  people.  And  they  have  the 
touching  simplicity  of  children;  they  are 
always  children  in  their  ignorance  of  them- 
selves, of  one  another,  and  of  fate.  And, 
because  they  are  so  disembodied  of  the 
more  trivial  accidents  of  life,  they  give  them- 
selves without  limitation  to  whatever  pas- 
sionate instinct  possesses  them.  I do  not 
know  a more  passionate  love-scene  than 
that  scene  in  the  wood  beside  the  fountain, 
where  Pell6as  and  Melisande  confess  the 
strange  burden  which  has  come  upon  them. 
When  the  soul  gives  itself  absolutely  to  love, 
all  the  barriers  of  the  world  are  burnt  away, 
and  all  its  wisdom  and  subtlety  are  as  in- 


312  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


cense  poured  on  a flame.  Morality,  too, 
is  burnt  away,  no  longer  exists,  any  more 
than  it  does  for  children  or  for  God. 

Maeterlinck  has  realised,  better  than  any 
one  else,  the  significance,  in  life  and  art,  of 
mystery.  He  has  realised  how  unsearchable 
is  the  darkness  out  of  which  we  have  but 
just  stepped,  and  the  darkness  into  which 
we  are  about  to  pass.  And  he  has  realised 
how  the  thought  and  sense  of  that  twofold 
darkness  invade  the  little  space  of  light  in 
which,  for  a moment,  we  move;  the  depth  to 
which  they  shadow  our  steps,  even  in  that 
moment’s  partial  escape.  But  in  some  of  his 
plays  he  would  seem  to  have  apprehended 
this  mystery  as  a thing  merely  or  mainly  ter- 
rifying; the  actual  physical  darkness  sur- 
rounding blind  men,  the  actual  physical  ap- 
proach of  death  as  the  intruder;  he  has  shown 
us  people  huddled  at  a window,  out  of  which 
they  are  almost  afraid  to  look,  or  beating  at  a 
door,  the  opening  of  which  they  dread.  Fear 
shivers  through  these  plays,  creeping  across 
our  nerves  like  a damp  mist  coiling  up  out  of  a 
valley.  And  there  is  beauty,  certainly,  in 
this  “vague  spiritual  fear”;  but  a less  obvious 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  313 


kind  of  beauty  than  that  which  gives  its  pro- 
found pathos  to  Aglavaine  et  Selysette,  the  one 
play  written  since  the  writing  of  the  essays. 
Here  is  mystery,  which  is  also  pure  beauty,  in 
these  delicate  approaches  of  intellectual  pathos, 
in  which  suffering  and  death  and  error  become 
transformed  into  something  almost  happy,  so 
full  is  it  of  strange  light. 

And  the  aim  of  Maeterlinck,  in  his  plays, 
is  not  only  to  render  the  soul  and  the  soul’s 
atmosphere,  but  to  reveal  this  strangeness, 
pity,  and  beauty  through  beautiful  pictures. 
No  dramatist  has  ever  been  so  careful  that 
his  scenes  should  be  in  themselves  beautiful, 
or  has  made  the  actual  space  of  forest,  tower, 
or  seashore  so  emotionally  significant.  He  has 
realised,  after  Wagner,  that  the  art  of  the  stage 
is  the  art  of  pictorial  beauty,  of  the  corre- 
spondence in  rhythm  between  the  speakers, 
their  words,  and  their  surroundings.  He  has 
seen  how,  in  this  way,  and  in  this  way  alone, 
the  emotion,  which  it  is  but  a part  of  the 
poetic  drama  to  express,  can  be  at  once  inten- 
sified and  purified. 

It  is  only  after  hinting  at  many  of  the 
things  which  he  had  to  say  in  these  plays, 


314  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


which  have,  after  all,  been  a kind  of  subter- 
fuge, that  Maeterlinck  has  cared,  or  been  able, 
to  speak  with  the  direct  utterance  of  the 
essays.  And  what  may  seem  curious  is  that 
this  prose  of  the  essays,  which  is  the  prose  of 
a doctrine,  is  incomparably  more  beautiful 
than  the  prose  of  the  plays,  which  was  the 
prose  of  an  art.  Holding  on  this  point  a 
different  opinion  from  one  who  was,  in  many 
senses,  his  master,  Villiers  de  lTsle-Adam,  he 
did  not  admit  that  beauty  of  words,  or  even 
any  expressed  beauty  of  thoughts,  had  its 
place  in  spoken  dialogue,  even  though  it  was 
not  two  living  actors  speaking  to  one  another 
on  the  stage,  but  a soul  speaking  to  a soul, 
and  imagined  speaking  through  the  mouths  of 
marionettes.  But  that  beauty  of  phrase  which 
makes  the  profound  and  sometimes  obscure 
pages  of  Axel  shine  as  with  the  crossing  fire 
of  jewels,  rejoices  us,  though  with  a softer,  a 
more  equable,  radiance,  in  the  pages  of  these 
essays,  in  which  every  sentence  has  the  in- 
dwelling beauty  of  an  intellectual  emotion, 
preserved  at  the  same  height  of  tranquil 
ecstasy  from  first  page  to  last.  There  is  a 
sort  of  religious  calm  in  these  deliberate  sen- 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  315 


tences,  into  which  the  writer  has  known  how 
to  introduce  that  divine  monotony  which  is 
one  of  the  accomplishments  of  great  style. 
Never  has  simplicity  been  more  ornate  or  a 
fine  beauty  more  visible  through  its  self- 
concealment. 

But,  after  all,  the  claim  upon  us  of  this 
book  is  not  the  claim  of  a work  of  art,  but 
of  a doctrine,  and  more  than  that,  of  a sys- 
tem. Belonging,  as  he  does,  to  the  eternal 
hierarchy,  the  unbroken  succession,  of  the 
mystics,  Maeterlinck  has  apprehended  what 
is  essential  in  the  mystical  doctrine  with  a 
more  profound  comprehension,  and  thus  more 
systematically,  than  any  mystic  of  recent 
times.  He  has  many  points  of  resemblance 
with  Emerson,  on  whom  he  has  written  an 
essay  which  is  properly  an  exposition  of  his 
own  personal  ideas;  but  Emerson,  who  pro- 
claimed the  supreme  guidance  of  the  inner 
light,  the  supreme  necessity  of  trusting  in- 
stinct, of  honouring  emotion,  did  but  proclaim 
all  this,  not  without  a certain  anti-mystical 
vagueness:  Maeterlinck  has  systematised  it. 
A more  profound  mystic  than  Emerson,  he 
has  greater  command  of  that  which  comes  to 


316  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


him  unawares,  is  less  at  the  mercy  of  visiting 
angels.  / 

Also,  it  may  be  said  that  he  surrenders 
himself  to  them  more  absolutely,  with  less 
reserve  and  discretion;  and,  as  he  has  infinite 
leisure,  his  contemplation  being  subject  to  no 
limits  of  time,  he  is  ready  to  follow  them  on 
unknown  rounds,  to  any  distance,  in  any  direc- 
tion, ready  also  to  rest  in  any  wayside  inn, 
without  fearing  that  he  will  have  lost  the 
road  on  the  morrow. 

This  old  gospel,  of  which  Maeterlinck  is 
the  new  voice,  has  been  quietly  waiting  until 
certain  bankruptcies,  the  bankruptcy  of  Sci- 
ence, of  the  Positive  Philosophies,  should  allow 
it  full  credit.  Considering  the  length  even  of 
time,  it  has  not  had  an  unreasonable  space  of 
waiting ; and  remember  that  it  takes  time  but 
little  into  account.  We  have  seen  many  little 
gospels  demanding  of  every  emotion,  of  every 
instinct,  “its  certificate  at  the  hand  of  some 
respectable  authority.”  Without  confidence  in 
themselves  or  in  things,  and  led  by  Science, 
which  is  as  if  one  were  led  by  one’s  note-book, 
they  demand  a reasonable  explanation  of 
every  mystery.  Not  finding  that  explana- 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  317 


tion,  they  reject  the  mystery;  which  is  as  if 
the  fly  on  the  wheel  rejected  the  wheel  because 
it  was  hidden  from  his  eyes  by  the  dust  of  its 
own  raising.  >. 

The  mystic  is  at  once  the  proudest  and  the 
humblest  of  men.  He  is  as  a child  who  resigns 
himself  to  the  guidance  of  an  unseen  hand, 
the  hand  of  one  walking  by  his  side ; he  resigns 
himself  with  the  child’s  humility.  And  he 
has  the  pride  of  the  humble,  a pride  manifesting 
itself  in  the  calm  rejection  of  every  accepted 
map  of  the  roads,  of  every  offer  of  assistance,  of 
every  painted  signpost  pointing  out  the  smooth- 
est ways  on  which  to  travel.  He  demands  no 
authority  for  the  unseen  hand  whose  fingers 
he  feels  upon  his  wrist.  He  conceives  of  life, 
not,  indeed,  so  much  as  a road  on  which  one 
walks,  very  much  at  one’s  own  discretion,  but 
as  a blown  and  wandering  ship,  surrounded  by 
a sea  from  which  there  is  no  glimpse  of  land; 
and  he  conceives  that  to  the  currents  of  that 
sea  he  may  safely  trust  himself.  Let  his  hand, 
indeed,  be  on  the  rudder,  there  will  be  no 
miracle  worked  for  him;  it  is  enough  miracle 
that  the  sea  should  be  there,  and  the  ship, 
and  he  himself.  He  will  never  know  why 


318  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


his  hand  should  turn  the  rudder  this  way 
rather  than  that. 

Jacob  Boehme  has  said,  very  subtly,  “that 
man  does  not  perceive  the  truth  but  God 
perceives  the  truth  in  man”;  that  is,  that 
whatever  we  perceive  or  do  is  not  perceived 
or  done  consciously  by  us,  but  unconsciously 
through  us.  Our  business,  then,  is  to  tend 
that  “inner  light”  by  which  most  mystics 
have  symbolised  that  which  at  once  guides  us 
in  time  and  attaches  us  to  eternity.  This 
inner  light  is  no  miraculous  descent  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  but  the  perfectly  natural,  though 
it  may  finally  be  overcoming,  ascent  of  the 
spirit  within  us.  The  spirit,  in  all  men,  being 
but  a ray  of  the  universal  light,  it  can,  by 
careful  tending,  by  the  removal  of  all  obstruc- 
tion, the  cleansing  of  the  vessel,  the  trimming 
of  the  wick,  as  it  were,  be  increased,  made  to 
burn  with  a steadier,  a brighter  flame.  In 
the  last  rapture  it  may  become  dazzling,  may 
blind  the  watcher  with  excess  of  light,  shutting 
him  in  within  the  circle  of  transfiguration, 
whose  extreme  radiance  will  leave  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  henceforth  one  darkness. 

All  mystics  being  concerned  with  what  is 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  319 


divine  in  life,  with  the  laws  which  apply 
equally  to  time  and  eternity,  it  may  happen 
to  one  to  concern  himself  chiefly  with  time 
seen  under  the  aspect  of  eternity,  to  another 
to  concern  himself  rather  with  eternity  seen 
under  the  aspect  of  time.  Thus  many  mystics 
have  occupied  themselves,  very  profitably, 
with  showing  how  natural,  how  explicable  on 
their  own  terms,  are  the  mysteries  of  life;  the 
whole  aim  of  Maeterlinck  is  to  show  how 
mysterious  all  life  is,  “what  an  astonishing 
thing  it  is,  merely  to  live.”  What  he  had 
pointed  out  to  us,  with  certain  solemn  ges- 
tures, in  his  plays,  he  sets  himself  now  to 
affirm,  slowly,  fully,  with  that  “confidence 
in  mystery”  of  which  he  speaks.  Because 
“there  is  not  an  hour  without  its  familiar 
miracles  and  its  ineffable  suggestions,”  he 
sets  himself  to  show  us  these  miracles  and 
these  meanings  where  others  have  not  always 
sought  or  found  them,  in  women,  in  children, 
in  the  theatre.  He  seems  to  touch,  at  one 
moment  or  another,  whether  he  is  discussing 
La  Beaute  Interieure  or  Le  Tragique  Quotidien, 
on  all  of  these  hours,  and  there  is  no  hour  so 
dark  that  his  touch  does  not  illuminate  it. 


320  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


And  it  is  characteristic  of  him,  of  his  “ con- 
fidence in  mystery,”  that  he  speaks  always 
without  raising  his  voice,  without  surprise  or 
triumph,  or  the  air  of  having  said  anything 
more  than  the  simplest  observation.  He 
speaks,  not  as  if  he  knew  more  than  others,  or 
had  sought  out  more  elaborate  secrets,  but  as 
if  he  had  listened  more  attentively. 

Loving  most  those  writers  “whose  works 
are  nearest  to  silence,”  he  begins  his  book, 
significantly,  wdth  an  essay  on  Silence,  an 
essay  which,  like  all  these  essays,  has  the 
reserve,  the  expressive  reticence,  of  those 
“active  silences”  of  which  he  succeeds  in 
revealing  a few  of  the  secrets. 

“Souls,”  he  tells  us,  “are  weighed  in  silence, 
as  gold  and  silver  are  weighed  in  pure  water, 
and  the  words  which  we  pronounce  have  no 
meaning  except  through  the  silence  in  which 
they  are  bathed.  We  seek  to  know  that  we 
may  learn  not  to  know”;  knowledge,  that 
which  can  be  known  by  the  pure  reason,  meta- 
physics, “indispensable”  on  this  side  of  the 
“frontiers,”  being  after  all  precisely  what  is 
least  essential  to  us,  since  least  essentially 
ourselves.  “We  possess  a self  more  profound 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  321 


and  more  boundless  than  the  self  of  the  pas- 
sions or  of  pure  reason.  . . . There  comes  a 
moment  when  the  phenomena  of  our  cus- 
tomary consciousness,  what  we  may  call  the 
consciousness  of  the  passions  or  of  our  normal 
relationships,  no  longer  mean  anything  to  us, 
no  longer  touch  our  real  life.  I admit  that 
this  consciousness  is  often  interesting  in  its 
way,  and  that  it  is  often  necessary  to  know  it 
thoroughly.  But  it  is  a surface  plant,  and 
its  roots  fear  the  great  central  fire  of  our  being. 
I may  commit  a crime  without  the  least  breath 
stirring  the  tiniest  flame  of  this  fire;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  crossing  of  a single  glance, 
a thought  which  never  comes  into  being,  a 
minute  which  passes  without  the  utterance 
of  a word,  may  rouse  it  into  terrible  agitations 
in  the  depths  of  its  retreat,  and  cause  it  to 
overflow  upon  my  life.  Our  soul  does  not 
judge  as  we  judge;  it  is  a capricious  and 
hidden  thing.  It  can  be  reached  by  a breath 
and  unconscious  of  a tempest.  Let  us  find  out 
what  reaches  it;  everything  is  there,  for  it  is 
there  that  we  ourselves  are.” 

And  it  is  towards  this  point  that  all  the 
words  of  this  book  tend.  Maeterlinck,  unlike 


322  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


most  men  (‘'What  is  man  but  a God  who  is 
afraid?”),  is  not  “miserly  of  immortal  things.” 
He  utters  the  most  divine  secrets  without 
fear,  betraying  certain  hiding-places  of  the 
soul  in  those  most  nearly  inaccessible  retreats 
which  lie  nearest  to  us.  All  that  he  says  we 
know  already;  we  may  deny  it,  but  we  know 
it.  It  is  what  we  are  not  often  at  leisure 
enough  with  ourselves,  sincere  enough  with 
ourselves,  to  realise;  what  we  often  dare  not 
realise;  but,  when  he  says  it,  we  know  that 
it  is  true,  and  our  knowledge  of  it  is  his 
warrant  for  saying  it.  He  is  what  he  is 
precisely  because  he  tells  us  nothing  which 
we  do  not  already  know,  or  it  may  be,  what 
we  have  known  and  forgotten. 

The  mystic,  let  it  be  remembered,  has 
nothing  in  common  with  the  moralist.  He 
speaks  only  to  those  who  are  already  prepared 
to  listen  to  him,  and  he  is  indifferent  to  the 
“practical”  effect  which  these  or  others  may 
draw  from  his  word§.  A young  and  profound 
mystic  of  our  day  has  figured  the  influence  of 
wise  words  upon  the  foolish  and  headstrong 
as  “torches  thrown  into  a burning  city.” 
The  mystic  knows  well  that  it  is  not  always 


MAETERLINCK  AS  A MYSTIC  323 


the  soul  of  the  drunkard  or  the  blasphemer 
which  is  farthest  from  the  eternal  beauty.  He 
is  concerned  only  with  that  soul  of  the  soul, 
that  life  of  life,  with  which  the  day’s  doings 
have  so  little  to  do;  itself  a mystery,  and  at 
home  only  among  those  supreme  mysteries 
which  surround  it  like  an  atmosphere.  It  is 
not  always  that  he  cares  that  his  message,  or 
his  vision,  may  be  as  clear  to  others  as  it  is  to 
himself.  But,  because  he  is  an  artist,  and 
not  only  a philosopher,  Maeterlinck  has  taken 
especial  pains  that  not  a word  of  his  may  go 
astray,  and  there  is  not  a word  of  this  book 
which  needs  to  be  read  twice,  in  order  that  it 
may  be  understood,  by  the  least  trained  of 
attentive  readers.  It  is,  indeed,  as  he  calls 
it,  “The  Treasure  of  the  Lowly.” 


CONCLUSION 


Our  only  chance,  in  this  world,  of  a complete 
happiness,  lies  in  the  measure  of  our  success 
in  shutting  the  eyes  of  the  mind,  and  dead- 
ening its  sense  of  hearing,  and  dulling  the 
keenness  of  its  apprehension  of  the  unknown. 
Knowing  so  much  less  than  nothing,  for  we 
are  entrapped  in  smiling  and  many-coloured 
appearances,  our  life  may  seem  to  be  but  a 
little  space  of  leisure,  in  which  it  will  be  the 
necessary  business  of  each  of  us  to  speculate 
on  what  is  so  rapidly  becoming  the  past  and 
so  rapidly  becoming  the  future,  that  scarcely 
existing  present  which  is  after  all  our  only 
possession.  Yet,  as  the  present  passes  from 
us,  hardly  to  be  enjoyed  except  as  memory 
or  as  hope,  and  only  with  an  at  best  partial 
recognition  of  the  uncertainty  or  inutility  of 
both,  it  is  with  a kind  of  terror  that  we  wake 
up,  every  now  and  then,  to  the  whole  knowl- 
edge of  our  ignorance,  and  to  some  per- 
ception of  where  it  is  leading  us.  To  live 
324 


CONCLUSION 


325 


through  a single  day  with  that  overpowering 
consciousness  of  our  real  position,  which,  in 
the  moments  in  which  alone  it  mercifully 
comes,  is  like  blinding  light  or  the  thrust 
of  a flaming  sword,  would  drive  any  man 
out  of  his  senses.  It  is  our  hesitations,  the 
excuses  of  our  hearts,  the  compromises  of 
our  intelligence,  which  save  us.  We  can 
forget  so  much,  we  can  bear  suspense  with 
so  fortunate  an  evasion  of  its  real  issues; 
we  are  so  admirably  finite. 

And  so  there  is  a great,  silent  conspiracy 
between  us  to  forget  death;  all  our  lives  are 
spent  in  busily  forgetting  death.  That  is 
why  we  are  active  about  so  many  things 
which  we  know  to  be  unimportant;  why  we 
are  so  afraid  of  solitude,  and  so  thankful  for 
the  company  of  our  fellow-creatures.  Allow- 
ing ourselves,  for  the  most  part,  to  be  but 
vaguely  conscious  of  that  great  suspense  in 
which  we  live,  we  find  our  escape  from  its 
sterile,  annihilating  reality  in  many  dreams, 
in  religion,  passion,  art;  each  a forgetfulness, 
each  a symbol  of  creation;  religion  being  the 
creation  of  a new  heaven,  passion  the  creation 
of  a new  earth,  and  art,  in  its  mingling  of 


326  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


heaven  and  earth,  the  creation  of  heaven  out 
of  earth.  Each  is  a kind  of  sublime  sel- 
fishness, the  saint,  the  lover,  and  the  artist 
having  each  an  incommunicable  ecstasy  which 
he  esteems  as  his  ultimate  attainment,  how- 
ever, in  his  lower  moments,  he  may  serve 
God  in  action,  or  do  the  will  of  his  mistress, 
or  minister  to  men  by  showing  them  a little 
beauty.  But  it  is,  before  all  things,  aif  escape : 
and  the  prophets  who  have  redeemed- the 
world,  and  the  artists  wrho  have  made  the 
world  beautiful,  and  the  lovers  who  have 
quickened  the  pulses  of  the  world,  have  really, 
whether  they  knew  it  or  not,  been  fleeing 
from  the  certainty  of  one  thought:  that  we 
have,  all  of  us,  only  our  one  day;  and  from 
the  dread  of  that  other  thought : that  the  day, 
however  used,  must  after  all  be  wasted. 

The  fear  of  death  is  not  cowardice;  it  is, 
rather,  an  intellectual  dissatisfaction  with  an 
enigma  which  has  been  presented  to  us,  and 
which  can  be  solved  only  when  its  solution 
is  of  no  further  use.  All  we  have  to  ask 
of  death  is  the  meaning  of  life,  and  we  are 
waiting  all  through  life  to  ask  that  question. 
That  life  should  be  happy  or  unhappy,  as 


CONCLUSION 


327 


those  words  are  used,  means  so  very  little; 
and  the  heightening  or  lessening  of  the  gen- 
eral felicity  of  the  world  means  so  little  to 
any  individual.  There  is  something  almost 
vulgar  in  happiness  which  does  not  become 
joy.  and  joy  is  an  ecstasy  which  can  rarely 
be  maintained  in  the  soul  for  more  than  the 
moment  during  which  we  recognize  that  it 
is  not  sorrow.  Only  very  young  people  want 
to  be  happy.  What  we  all  want  is  to  be 
quite  sure  that  there  is  something  which 
makes  it  worth  while  to  go  on  living,  in 
what  seems  to  us  our  best  way,  at  our  finest 
intensity;  something  beyond  the  mere  fact 
that  we  are  satisfying  a sort  of  inner  logic 
(which  may  be  quite  faulty)  and  that  we  get 
our  best  makeshift  for  happiness  on  that  so 
hazardous  assumption. 

Well,  the  doctrine  6f  Mysticism,  with  which 
all  this  symbolical  literature  has  so  much 
to  do,  of  which  it  is  all  so  much  the  expres- 
sion, presents  us,  not  with  a guide  for  con- 
duct, not  with  a plan  for  our  happiness, 
not  with  an  explanation  of  any  mystery,  but 
with  a theory  of  life  which  makes  us  familiar 
with  mystery,  and  which  seems  to  harmonise 


328  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


those  instincts  which  make  for  religion,  pas- 
sion, and  art,  freeing  us  at  once  of  a great 
bondage.  The  final  uncertainty  remains,  but 
we  seem  to  knock  less  helplessly  at  closed 
doors,  coming  so  much  closer  to  the  once 
terrifying  eternity  of  things  about  us,  as  we 
come  to  look  upon  these  things  as  shadows, 
through  which  we  have  our  shadowy  passage. 
“ For  in  the  particular  acts  of  human  life,” 
Plotinus  tells  us,  “it  is  not  the  interior  soul 
and  the  true  man,  but  the  exterior  shadow 
of  the  man  alone,  which  laments  and  weeps, 
performing  his  part  on  the  earth  as  in  a 
more  ample  and  extended  scene,  in  which 
many  shadows  of  souls  and  phantom  scenes 
appear.”  And  as  we  realise  the  identity  of 
a poem,  a prayer,  or  a kiss,  in  that  spiritual 
universe  which  we  are  weaving  for  ourselves, 
each  out  of  a thread  of  the  great  fabric;  as 
we  realise  the  infinite  insignificance  of  action, 
its  immense  distance  from  the  current  of  life; 
as  we  realise  the  delight  of  feeling  ourselves 
carried  onward  by  forces  which  it  is  our 
wisdom  to  obey;  it  is  at  least  with  a certain 
relief  that  we  turn  to  an  ancient  doctrine, 
so  much  the  more  likely  to  be  true  because 


CONCLUSION 


329 


it  has  so  much  the  air  of  a dream.  On  this 
theory  alone  does  all  life  become  worth  living, 
all  art  worth  making,  all  worship  worth 
offering.  And  because  it  might  slay  as  well 
as  save,  because  the  freedom  of  its  sweet 
captivity  might  so  easily  become  deadly  to 
the  fool,  because  that  is  the  hardest  path  to 
walk  in  where  you  are  told  only,  walk  well; 
it  is  perhaps  the  only  counsel  of  perfection 
which  can  ever  really  mean  much  to  the 
artist. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


The  essays  contained  in  this  book  are  not  intended  to 
give  information.  They  are  concerned  with  ideas  rather 
than  with  facts;  each  is  a study  of  a problem,  only  in  part 
a literary  one,  in  which  I have  endeavoured  to  consider 
writers  as  personalities  under  the  action  of  spiritual  forces, 
or  as  themselves  so  many  forces.  But  it  has  seemed  to 
me  that  readers  have  a right  to  demand  information  in 
regard  to  writers  who  are  so  often  likely  to  be  unfamiliar 
to  them.  I have,  therefore,  given  a bibliography  of  the 
works  of  each  writer  with  whom  I have  dealt,  and  I have 
added  a number  of  notes,  giving  various  particulars  which 
I think  are  likely  to  be  useful  in  fixing  more  definitely 
the  personal  characteristics  of  these  writers. 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC 

(1799-1850) 

La  Comedie  Humaine 
Scenes  de  la  Vie  Privee 

Preface.  La  MaisonduChat-qui-pelote,  1829;  LeBalde 
Sceaux,  1829;  Memoires  de  deux  jeunes  Marties,  1841; 
La  Bourse,  1832;  Modeste  Mignon,  1844;  Un  Debut  dans 
la  vie,  1842;  Albert  Savarus,  1842;  La  Vendetta,  1830; 
La  Paix  du  menage,  1829;  Madame  Firmiani,  1832; 
Etude  de  femme,  1830;  La  Fausse  mattresse,  1842;  Une 
Fille  d’Eve,  1838;  Le  Message,  1832;  La  Grenadiere,  1832; 
La  Femme  abandonnee,  1832;  Honorine,  1843;  Beatrix, 
1838;  Gobseck,  1830;  La  Femme  de  trente  ans,  1834;  La 
Plre  Goriot,  1834;  Le  Colonel  Chabert,  1832;  La  Messe  de 
VAthee,  1836;  L’ Interdiction,  1836;  Le  Contrat  de  manage, 
1835;  Autre  etude  de  femme,  1839;  La  Grande  Breteche, 
1832. 


Scenes  de  la  vie  de  Province 

Ursule  Mirouet,  1841;  Eugenie  Grandet,  1833;  Le  Lys 
danslavcdlee,  1835;  Pierrette,  1839;  LeCurede  Tours,  1832; 
La  Menage  d’un  gargon,  1842;  L’illuslre  Gaudissart,  1833; 
La  Muse  du  departement,  1843;  Le  Vieille  fille,  1836; 
Le  Cabinet  des  Antiques,  1837 ; Les  Illusions  Perdues,  1836. 
335 


336  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Scenes  de  la  Vie  Parisienne 

Ferragus,  1833;  La  Duchesse  de  Langeais,  1834;  La 
Fille  aux  yeux  d’or,  1834;  La  Grandeur  et  la  Decadence  de 
Cesar  Birotteau,  1837;  La  Maison  Nucingen,  1837;  Splen- 
deurs  et  miseres  des  courtisanes,  1838;  Les  Secrets  de  la 
Princesse  de  Cadignan,  1839;  Facino  Cane,  1836;  Sar- 
rasine,  1830;  Pierre  Grassou,  1839 ; La  C'ousine  Bette,  1846; 
Le  Cousin  Pons,  1847;  Un  Prince  de  la  Boheme,  1839; 
Gaudissart  II,  1844;  Les  Employes,  1836;  Les  Comediens 
sans  le  savoir,  1845;  Les  Petits  Bourgeois,  1845; 

Scenes  de  la  Vie  Militarie 

Les  Chouans,  1827;  Une  Passion  dans  le  desert,  1830. 

Scenes  de  la  Vie  Politique 

Un  Episode  sous  la  Terreur,  1831;  Une  Tenebreuse  Af- 
faire, 1841;  Z.  M areas,  1840;  L’ Envers  de  VHistoire  con- 
temporaine,  1847 ; Le  Depute  d’Arcis. 

Scenes  de  la  Vie  de  Campagne 

Le  Medecin  de  campagne,  1832;  Le  Cure  de  village,  1837; 
Les  Paysans,  1845. 

Etudes  Philosophiques 

La  Peau  de  Chagrin,  1830;  Jesus-Christ  en  Flandres, 
1831;  Melmoth  reconcilie,  1835;  Le  Chef-d’oeuvre  inconnu, 
1832;  Gambara,  1837;  Massimilla  Doni,  1839;  La  Rech- 
erche de  I’Absolu,  1834;  L’ Enfant  Maudit,  1831;  Les 
Maranas,  1832;  Adieu,  1830;  Le  Requisitionnaire,  1831; 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


337 


El  Verdugo,  1829;  Un  Drame  au  bord  de  la  mer,  1834; 
L’Auberge  rouge,  1831;  L’ Elixir  de  longue  vie,  1830; 
Maitre  Cornelius,  1831;  Catherine  de  Medicis,  1836; 
Les  Proscrits,  1831;  Louis  Lambert,  1832;  Seraphita,  1833. 

Etudes  Analytiques 

La  Physiologie  du  manage,  1829;  Petites  mis&res  de  la 
vie  conjugate. 

Thedtre 

Vautrin,  Drame  5 Actes,  1840;  Les  Ressources  de  Quinola, 
Comedie  5 Actes,  1842;  Pamela  Giraud,  Drame  5 Actes, 
1843;  La  Mardtre,  Drame  5 Actes,  1848;  La  Faiseur 
( Mercadet ),  Comedie  5 Actes,  1851;  Les  Contes  Drolatiques, 
1832,  1833,  1839. 


338  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


PROSPER  MERIMEE 

(1803-1870) 

La  Guzla,  1827;  La  Jacquerie,  1828;  Le  Chronique  du 
Temps  de  Charles  IX,  1829;  La  Vase  Etrusque,  1829; 
V&nus  d’llle,  1837;  Colomba,  1846;  Carmen,  1845;  Lokis, 
1869;  Mateo  Falcone,  1876;  Melanges  Historiques  et  Litte- 
raires,  1855;  Les  Cosaques  d’Autre-fois,  1865;  Etude  sur 
les  Arts  au  Moyen-Age,  1875;  Les  Faux  Demetrius,  1853; 
Etude  sur  VHistoire  Romaine,  1844;  Histoire  de  Dom 
Pedro,  1848;  Lettres  a une  Inconnue,  1874. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


339 


GERARD  DE  NERVAL 

(1808-1855) 

Napoleon  et  la  France  Guerriere,  elegies  nationales, 
1826;  La  mort  de  Talma,  1826;  L’Academie,  ou  les  Mem- 
bres  Introuvables,  comedie  satirique  en  vers,  1826;  NapoUon 
et  Talma,  elegies  nationales  nouvelles,  1826;  M.  Dentsc<ju.rt, 
ou  le  Cuisinier  Grand  Homme,  1826;  Elegies  Nationales  et 
Satires  Politiques,  1827;  Faust,  tragedie  de  Goethe,  1828 
(suivi  du  second  Faust,  1840);  Couronne  Poelique  de 
B&ranger,  1828;  Le  Peuple,  ode,  1830;  Poesies  Allemandes, 
Morgeaux  cho  sis  et  traduits,  1830;  Choix  de  Poesies  de 
Ronsard  et  de  Regnier,  1830;  Nos  Adieux  a la  Chambre 
de  Deputes  de  Van  1830,  1831;  Lenore,  traduite  de  Burger, 
1835;  Piquilo,  opera  comique  (with  Dumas),  1837;  L’Al- 
chimiste,  drame  en  vers  (with  Dumas),  1839;  Leo  Burck- 
hardt,  drame  en  prose  (with  Dumas),  1839;  Scenes  de  la 
Vie  Orientate,  2 vols.,  1848-1850;  Les  Montenegrins,  Optra 
comique  (with  Alboize),  1849;  Le  Chariot  d’ Enfant,  drame 
en  vers  (with  M4ry),  1850;  Les  Nuits  du  Ramazan,  1850; 
Voyage  en  Orient,  1851;  L’lmagier  de  Harlem,  legende 
en  prose  et  en  vers  (with  M6ry  and  Bernard  Lopez), 
1852;  Contes  et  Factties,  1852;  Lorely,  souvenirs  d’Alle- 
magne,  1852;  Les  Illumines,  1852;  Petits  Chateaux  de 
Boheme,  1853;  Les  Filles  du  Feu,  1854;  Misanthropie  et 
Repentir,  drame  de  Kotzebue,  1855;  La  Boheme  galante, 
1855;  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie;  Aurelia,  1855;  Le  Marquis  de 


340  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Fayolle  (with  E.  Gorges),  1856;  (Euvres  Completes,  6 vols. 
(1,  Les  Deux  Faust  de  Goethe;  2,  3,  Voyage  en  Orient;  4, 
Les  Illumines,  Les  Faux  Saulniers;  5,  Le  Reve  et  la  Vie,  Les 
Filles  du  Feu,  La  Boheme  galante;  6,  Poesies  Completes), 
1867. 

The  sonnets,  written  at  different  periods  and  published 
for  the  first  time  in  the  collection  of  1854,  “Les  Filles  du 
Feu,”  which  also  contains  “Sylvie,”  were  reprinted  in  the 
volume  of  Poesies  Completes,  where  they  are  imbedded  in 
the  midst  of  deplorable  juvenilia.  All,  or  almost  all,  of  the 
verse  worth  preserving  was  collected,  m 1897,  by  that 
delicate  amateur  of  the  curiosities  of  beauty,  M.  Remy 
de  Gourmont,  in  a tiny  volume  called  Les  Chimeres, 
which  contains  the  six  sonnets  of  “ Les  Chimeres,”  the 
sonnet  called  “Vers  Dor4s,”  the  five  sonnets  of  “Le  Christ 
aux  Oliviers,”  and,  in  facsimile  of  the  autograph,  the 
lyric  called  “Les  Cydalises.”  The  true  facts  of  the  life 
of  G4rard  have  been  told  for  the  first  time,  from  original 
documents,  by  Mme.  Arvede  Baripe,  in  two  excellent 
articles  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  October  15  and 
November  1, 1897,  since  reprinted  in  Les  Neuroses,  1898. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES  341 


THEOPHILE  GAUTIER 

(1811-1872) 

Les  Poesies,  1830;  Albertus,  oil  I’emet  le  PechS,  1833; 
Les  Jeunes-F ranee,  1833;  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  1835; 
Fortunio,  1838. 

La  Comedie  de  la  Mort,  1838;  Tras  les  Montes,  1839; 
Une  Larme  du  Diable,  1839;  Gisele,  ballet,  1841;  Une 
Voyage  en  Espagne,  1843;  Le  Peri,  ballet,  1843;  Les  Gro- 
tesques, 1844. 

Une  Nuit  de  Cleopdtre,  1845;  Premieres  Po'esies,  1845; 
Zigzags,  1845;  Le  Tricorne  Enchante,  1845;  La  Turquie, 
1846. 

La  Juive  de  Constantine,  drama,  1846;  Jean  et  Jean- 
nette, 1846;  Le  Roi  Candaule,  1847. 

Les  Roues  innocents,  1847;  Histoire  des  Peintres,  1847; 
Regardez,  mais  n'y  touche  pas,  1847 ; Les  Fetes  de  Madrid, 
1847;  Partie  carree,  1851;  Italia,  1852;  Les  Emaux  et 
Camdes,  1852;  U Art  Moderne,  1859;  Les  Beaux  Arts  en 
Europe,  1852;  Caprices  et  Zigzags,  1852;  Aria  Marcella, 
1852;  Les  Beaux-arts  en  Europe,  1855;  Constantinople, 
1854;  Thedtre  de  poche,  1855;  Le  Roman  de  la  Momie, 
1856;  Jettatura,  1857;  Avatar,  1857;  Sakountala,  Ballet, 
1858;  Honore  de  Balzac,  1859;  Les  Vosges,  1860;  Tresors 
d’Art  de  la  Russie,  1860-1863;  Histoire  de  Vart  thedtrale  en 
France  depuis  vingt-cinq  ans,  1860;  Le  Capitaine  Fracasse, 
1863;  Les  Dieux  et  les  Demi-Dieux  de  la  peintre,  1863; 


342  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 

Poesies  nouvelles,  1863;  Loin  de  Paris,  1864;  La  Belle 
Jenny,  1864;  Voyage  en  Russie,  1865;  Spirite,  1866;  Le 
Palais  pompeien  de  V Avenue  Montaigne,  1866;  Rapport 
sur  le  pr ogres  des  Lettres,  1868;  Menagere  intime,  1869; 
La  Nature  chez  Elle,  1870;  Tableaux  de  Siege,  1871; 
Thedtre,  1872;  Portraits  Contemporaines,  1874;  Histoire 
du  Romantisme,  1874;  Portraits  et  Souvenirs  litter air es, 
1875;  Poesies  completes,  1876:  2 vols.;  L’Orient,  1877; 
Fusins  et  eaux-Fortes,  1880;  Tableaux  a la  Plume,  1880; 
Mademoiselle  Daphne,  1881;  Guide  de  V Amateur  au  Musis 
du  Louvre.  1882;  Souvenirs  de  Thedtre  d’Art  et  de  critique, 
1883. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


343 


GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT 

(1821-1880) 

Madame  Bovary,  1857;  Salammbo,  1863;  La  Tentation  de 
Saint  Antoine,  1874;  L’ Education  Sentimentale,  1870; 
Trois  Contes,  1877;  Bouvard  et  Pechuche,  1881;  Le  Can- 
didat,  1874;  Sur  les  Champs  et  par  les  Greves,  1886;  Let- 
tres  d George  Sand,  1884;  Correspondances,  1887-1893. 


344  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


CHARLES  BAUDELAIRE 

(1821-1867) 

Salon  de  1845,  1845;  Salon  de  1846,  1846;  Histoires 
Extraordinaires,  traduit  de  Poe,  1856;  Nouvelle  Histoires 
Extraordinaires,  1857;  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai,  1857;  Aven- 
tures  d’ Arthur  Gordon  Pym  (Poe),  1858;  Theophile  Gau- 
tier, 1859;  Les  Paradis  Artificiels:  Opium  et  Haschisch, 
1860;  Richard  Wagner  et  Tannhauser  a Paris,  1861; 
Eureka:  Poe,  1864;  Histoires  Grotesques:  Poe,  1865; 
Les  Hpaves  de  Charles  Baudelaire,  1866. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


345 


EDMOND  and  JULES  DE  GONCOURT 

(1822-1896;  1830-1870) 

En  18,  1851;  Salon  de  1852,  1852;  La  Lorette,  1853; 
Mysteres  des  Thedtres,  1853;  La  revolution  dans  les  Mceurs, 
1854;  Histoire  de  la  Societe  Frangaise  pendent  la  Revo- 
lution, 1854;  Histoire  de  la  Societe  Frangaise  pendent  la 
Directoire,  1855;  Le  Peinture  d l’ Exposition  de  Paris  de 
1855,  1855;  Une  Voiture  des  Masques,  1856;  Les  Actrices, 
1856;  Sophie  Arnauld,  1857;  Portraits  intimes  du  XVIII 
Siecle,  1857-1858;  Histoire  de  Marie  Antoinette,  1858; 
L’Art  du  XVIII  Siecle,  1859-1875;  Les  Hommes  de 
Lettres,  1860;  Les  Mattresses  de  Louis  VI,  1860;  Sceur 
Philomene,  1861;  Les  Femmes  au  XVIII  Siecle,  1864; 
Renee  Mauperin,  1864;  Germinie  Lacei’teux,  1864;  Idees 
et  Sensations,  1860;  Manette  Salomon,  1867;  Madame 
Gervaisais,  1869;  Gavarni,  1873;  La  Patrie  en  Danger, 
1879;  L’Amour  au  XVIII  Siecle,  1873;  La  du  Barry, 
1875;  Madame  de  Pompadour,  1878;  La  Duchesse  de  la 
Chateauroux,  1879;  Pages  retrouvees,  1886;  Journal  des 
Goncourts,  1887-1896,  9 Vols.;  Prefaces  et  manifestes 
litteraires,  1888;  L’ltalie  d'hier,  1894;  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court:  Catalogue  raisonee  de  Vceuvre  peinte,  dessine  et  grave 
d’ Antoine  Watteau,  1873;  Catalogue  de  V oeuvre  de  P. 
Proudhun,  1876;  La  Fille  Elisa,  1879;  Les  Freres  Zam- 
ganno,  1879;  La  Maison  d’un  Artiste,  1881;  La  Faustin, 
1882;  La  SainVHubert,  1882;  Cherie,  1884;  Germinie 
Lacerteux,  pibce,  1888;  Mademoiselle  Clairon,  1890;  Outa- 
moro,  le  peintre  des  maisons  vertes,  1891;  La  Gumiard, 
1893;  A bas  le  progres,  1893;  Hokousei,  1896. 


346  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


VILLIERS  DE  L’ISLE-ADAM 

(1838-1889) 

Premieres  Poesies,  1859;  Isis,  1862;  Elen,  1864;  Mor- 
gane,  1865;  Claire  Lenoir  (in  the  Revue  des  Lettres  et  des 
Arts),  1867;  L’Evasion,  1870;  La  Revolte,  1870;  Azra'el, 
1878;  Le  Nouveau  Monde,  1880;  Contes  Cruels,  1880; 
L’Eve  Future,  1886;  Akedysseril,  1886;  L’ Amour  Supreme, 
1886;  Tribulat  Bonhomet,  1887;  Histoires  Insolites,  1888; 
Nouveaux  Contes  Cruels,  1889;  Axel,  1890;  Chez  les  Pas- 
sants,  1890;  Propos  d’Au-dela,  1893;  Histoires  Souveraines, 
1899  (a  selection). 

Among  works  announced,  but  never  published,  it  may 
be  interesting  to  mention : Seid,  William  de  Strally,  Faust, 
Poesies  Nouvelles  ( Intermedes ; Gog;  Ave,  Mater  Vida; 
Poesies  diver ses),  La  Tentation  sur  la  Montague,  Le  Vieux 
de  la  Montague,  L’ Adoration  des  Mages,  Meditations  Lit- 
teraires,  Melanges,  Theatre  (2  vols.),  Documents  sur  les 
Regnes  de  Charles  VI.  et  de  Charles  VII.,  L’lllusionisme, 
De  la  Connaissance  de  V Utile,  L’Exegese  Divine. 

A sympathetic,  but  slightly  vague,  Life  of  Villiers  was 
written  by  his  cousin,  Vicomte  Robert  du  Pontavice  de 
Heussey:  Villiers  de  VIsle-Adam,  1893;  it  was  translated 
into  English  by  Lady  Mary  Lloyd,  1894.  See  Verlaine’s 
Podes  M audits,  1884,  and  his  biography  of  Villiers  in  Les 
Hommes  d’Aujourd’hui,  the  series  of  penny  biographies, 
with  caricature  portraits,  published  by  Vanier;  also  Mai- 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES  347 


larm6’s  Villiers  de  VIsle-Adam,  the  reprint  of  a lecture 
given  at  Brussels  a few  months  after  Villiers’  death.  La 
Revolte  was  translated  by  Mrs.  Theresa  Barclay  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  December,  1897,  and  acted  in  London 
by  the  New  Stage  Club  in  1906.  I have  translated  a little 
poem,  Aveu,  from  the  interlude  of  verse  in  the  Contes 
Cruels  called  Chant  d’ Amour,  in  Days  and  Nights,  1889. 
An  article  of  mine,  the  first,  I believe,  to  be  written  on 
Villiers  in  English,  appeared  in  the  Woman’s  World  in 
1889;  another  in  the  Illustrated  London  News  in  1891. 


348  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


LEON  CLADEL 

(1835-1892) 

Les  Martyrs  Ridicules.  Preface  par  Charles  Baudelaire, 
1862;  Pierre  Patient,  1862;  L’ Amour  Romantique,  1882; 
Le  Deuxieme  Mystere  de  V Incarnation,  1883;  Le  Bous- 
cassie,  1889;  La  Fete-Votive  de  Saint  Bartholomee  Porte- 
Glaive,  1872;  Les  Vas- nu-Pieds,  1874;  Celui  de  la  Croix 
— aux  Bceufs,  1878;  Bonshommes,  1879;  Ompdrailles 
Le  Tombeau  des  Lutteurs,  1879;  N’aq’un  Oeil,  1885; 
Tity  Foyssac  IV,  1886;  Petits  Chiens  de  Leon  Cladel, 
1879;  Par  Devant  Notaire,  1880;  Crete-Rauge,  1880; 
Six  Morceaux  de  la  Litterature,  1880;  Kerkades  Garde- 
Barriere,  1884;  Urbains  et  Ruraux,  1884;  Leon  Cladel  et 
ses  Kyrielle  des  Chiens,  1885;  Heros  et  Pantins,  1885; 
Quelques  Sires,  1885;  Mi-Diable,  1886;  Gueux  de  Marque, 
1887;  Effigies  d’Inconnus,  1888;  Raca,  1888;  Seize 
Morceaux  de  Litterature,  1889;  L’ancien,  1889;  Juive- 
Errante,  1897. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES  349 


EMILE  ZOLA 

(1840-1902) 

Les  Rougon-Maequart,  1871-1893;  La  Fortune  des 
Rougons,  1871;  La  Curee,  1872;  Le  Ventre  de  Paris, 
1873;  La  Conquete  de  Pluisans,  1874;  La  Faute  de  Vabbe 
Mouret,  1875;  Son  Excellence  Eugene  Rougon,  1876-; 
L’Assommoir,  1876;  Une  Page  d’ Amour,  1878;  Nana, 
1880;  Pot.-Bouille,  1882;  Au  Bonheur  des  Dames,  1883; 
La  Joie  de  Vivre,  1884;  Madeleine  Ferat,  1885;  La  Con- 
fession de  Claude,  1886;  Contes  d Ninon,  1891;  Nou- 
veaux  Contes  d Ninon,  1874;  Le  Capitaine  Burle,  1883; 
La  joie  de  vivre,  1884;  Les  My  stores  de  Marseilles,  1885; 
Mes  Haines,  1866;  Le  Roman  Experimental,  1881;  Nos 
Auteurs  dramatiqices,  1881;  Documents  litteraires,  1881; 
Une  Compagne,  1882.  The&tre:  Therese  Raquin,  Les 
Heritiers  Rabourdin,  La  Bouton  de  Rose,  1890;  L’ Argent, 
1891;  L’Attaquedu  Moulin,  1890;  La  Bete  Humaine,  1890; 
La  Debdcle,  1892;  Le  Doctor  Pascal,  1893;  Germinie,  1885; 
Mon  Salon,  1886;  Le  naturalisme  au  Theatre,  1889; 
L'GEuvre,  1886;  Le  Reve,  1892;  Paris,  1898;  Rome,  1896; 
Lourdes,  1894;  Fecondite,  1899;  Travail,  1901;  Verite, 
1903. 


350  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


STEPHANE  MALLARME 

(1842-1898) 

Le  Corbeau  (traduit  de  Poe),  1875;  La  Derniere  Mode, 
1875;  L’Apres-Midi  d’un  Faune,  1876;  Le  Vathek  de 
Beckford,  1876;  Petite  Philologie  a V Usage  des  Classes  et 
du  Monde:  Les  Mots  Anglais,  1877;  Poesies  Completes 
(photogravdes  sur  le  manuscrit),  1887;  Les  Poems  de 
Poe,  1888;  Le  Ten  o’Clock  de  M.  Whistler,  1888;  Pages, 
1891;  Les  Miens:  Villiers  de  I’Isle-Adam,  1892;  Vers 
et  Prose,  1892;  La  Musique  et  les  Lettres  (Oxford,  Cam- 
bridge), 1894;  Divagations,  1897;  Poesies,  1S99. 

See,  on  this  difficult  subject,  Edmund  Gosse,  Questions 
at  Issue,  1893,  in  which  will  be  found  the  first  study  of 
Mallarme  that  appeared  in  English;  and  Vittorio  Pica, 
Letteratura  d’Eccezione,  1899,  which  contains  a carefully- 
documented  study  of  more  than  a hundred  pages.  There 
is  a translation  of  the  poem  called  “ Fleurs  ” in  Mr. 
John  Gray’s  Silverpoints,  1893,  and  translations  of  “ H6- 
rodiade  ” and  three  shorter  poems  ■Rail  be  found  in  the 
first  volume  of  my  collected  poems.  Several  of  the 
poems  in  prose  have  been  translated  into  English;  my 
translation  of  the  “ Plainte  d’Automne,”  contained  in 
this  volume,  was  made  in  momentary  forgetfulness  that 
the  same  poem  in  prose  had  already  been  translated  by 
Mr.  George  Moore  in  Confessions  of  a Young  Man.  Mr. 
Moore  also  translated  “ Le  Ph&iom&ne  Futur  ” in  the 
Savoy,  July,  1896. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES  351 


PAUL  VERLAINE 

(1844-1896) 

Po&mes  Satumiens,  1866;  Fetes  Galantes,  1869;  La 
Bonne  Chanson,  1870;  Romances  sans  Paroles,  1874; 
Sagesse,  1881;  Les  Poetes  M audits,  1884;  Jadis  et  Na- 
guere,  1884;  Les  Memoires  d’un  Veuf,  1886;  Louise 
Leclercq  (suivi  de  Le  Poteau,  Pierre  Duchatelet,  Madame 
Aubin ),  1887;  Amour,  1888;  Parallelement,  1889;  Dedi- 
caces,  1890;  Bonheur,  1891;  Mes  Hopitaux,  1891;  Chan- 
sons pour  Elle,  1891;  Liturgies  Intimes,  1892;  Mes 
Prisons,  1893;  Odes  en  son  Honneur,  1893;  Elegies,  1893; 
Quinze  Jours  en  Hollande,  1894;  Dans  les  LimJbes,  1894; 
Epigrammes,  1894;  Confessions,  1895;  Chair,  1896; 
Invectives,  1896;  Voyage  en  France  d’un  Frangais  (pos- 
thumous), 1907. 

The  complete  works  of  Verlaine  are  now  published 
in  six  volumes  at  the  Librairie  Leon  Vanier  (now  Mee- 
sein);  the  text  is  very  incorrectly  printed,  and  it  is 
still  necessary  to  refer  to  the  earlier  editions  in  separate 
volumes.  A Choix  de  Poesies,  1891,  with  a preface  by 
Francois  Copp6e,  and  a reproduction  of  Carriere’s  admir- 
able portrait,  is  published  in  one  volume  by  Charpentier; 
the  series  of  Hommes  d’Aujourd’hui  contains  twenty- 
seven  biographical  notices  by  Verlaine;  and  a con- 
siderable number  of  poems  and  prose  articles  exists, 
scattered  in  various  magazines,  some  of  them  English, 


352  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


such  as  the  Senate;  in  some  cases  the  articles  them- 
selves are  translated  into  English,  such  as  “My  Visit  to 
London,”  in  the  Savoy  for  April,  1896,  and  “ Notes  on 
England:  Myself  as  a French  Master,”  and  “Shake- 
speare and  Racine,”  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  July, 
1894,  and  September,  1894.  The  first  English  trans- 
lation in  verse  from  Verlaine  is  Arthur  O’Shaughnessy’s 
rendering  of  “ Clair  de  Lune  ” in  Fetes  Galantes,  under 
the  title  “ Pastel,”  in  Songs  of  a Worker,  1881.  A volume 
of  translations  in  verse,  Poems  of  Verlaine,  by  Gertrude 
Hall,  was  published  in  America  in  1895.  In  Mr.  John 
Gray’s  Silverpoints,  1893,  there  are  translations  of  “ Par- 
sifal,” “ A Crucifix,”  “ Le  Chevalier  Malheur,”  “ Spleen,” 
“ Clair  de  Lune,”  “ Mon  Dieu  m’a  dit,”  and  “ Green.” 

As  I have  mentioned,  there  have  been  many  por- 
traits of  Verlaine.  The  three  portraits  drawn  on  litho- 
graphic paper  by  Mr.  Rothenstein,  and  published  in 
1898,  are  but  the  latest,  if  also  among  the  best,  of  a long 
series,  of  which  Mr.  Rothenstein  himself  has  done  two 
or  three  others,  one  of  winch  was  reproduced  in  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  1894,  when  Verlaine  was  in  London. 
M.  F.  A.  Cazals,  a young  artist  who  was  one  of  Verlaine’s 
most  intimate  friends,  has  done  I should  not  like  to 
say  how  many  portraits,  some  of  which  he  has  gathered 
together  in  a little  book,  Paul  Verlaine:  ses  Portraits, 
1898.  There  are  portraits  in  nine  of  Verlaine’s  own  books, 
several  of  them  by  M.  Cazals  (roughly  jotted,  expressive 
notes  of  moments),  one  by  M.  Anquetin  (a  strong  piece 
of  thinking  flesh  and  blood),  and  in  the  Choix  de  Poesies 
there  is  a reproduction  of  the  cloudy,  inspired  poet  of 
M.  Eugene  Carriere’s  painting.  Another  portrait,  which 
I have  not  seen,  but  which  Verlaine  himself  calls,  in 
the  Dedicaces,  un  portrait  enfin  repose,  was  done  by 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES  353 


M.  Aman-Jean.  M.  Niederhausern  has  done  a bust 
in  bronze,  Mr.  Rothenstein  a portrait  medallion.  A 
new  edition  of  the  Confessions,  1899,  contains  a number 
of  sketches;  Verlaine  Dessinateur,  1896,  many  more; 
and  there  are  yet  others  in  the  extremely  objectionable 
book  of  M.  Charles  Donos,  Verlaine  Intime,  1898.  The 
Hommes  d’Aujourd’hui  contains  a caricature-portrait, 
many  other  portraits  have  appeared  in  French  and 
English  and  German  and  Italian  magazines,  and  there 
is  yet  another  portrait  in  the  admirable  little  book  of 
Charles  Morice,  Paul  Verlaine,  1888,  which  contains  by 
far  the  best  study  that  has  ever  been  made  of  Verlaine  as 
a poet.  I believe  Mr.  George  Moore’s  article,  “ A Great 
Poet,”  reprinted  in  Impressions  and  Opinions,  1891,  was 
the  first  that  was  written  on  Verlaine  in  England;  my 
own  article  in  the  National  Review  in  1892  was,  I believe, 
the  first  detailed  study  of  the  whole  of  his  work  up  to 
that  date.  At  last,  in  the  Vie  de  Paul  Verlaine,  of  Ed- 
mund Lepelletier,  there  has  come  the  authentic  record. 

An  honest  and  instructed  life  of  Verlaine  has  long  been 
wanted,  if  only  as  an  antidote  to  the  defamatory  pro- 
duction called  Verlaine  Intime,  made  up  out  of  materials 
collected  by  the  publisher  L6on  Vanier  in  his  own  defense, 
in  order  that  a hard  taskmaster  might  be  presented  to 
the  world  in  the  colours  of  a benefactor.  A “ legend  ” 
which  may  well  have  seemed  plausible  to  those  who 
knew  Verlaine  only  at  the  end  of  his  life,  has  obtained 
currency;  and  a comparison  of  Verlaine  with  Villon, 
not  only  as  a poet  (which  is  to  his  honour),  but  also 
as  a man,  has  been  made,  and  believed.  Lepelletier’s 
book  is  an  exact  chronicle  of  a friendship  which  lasted, 
without  a break,  for  thirty-six  years — that  is,  from  the 
time  when  Verlaine  was  sixteen  to  the  time  of  his  death; 


354  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


and  a more  sane,  loyal  and  impartial  chronicle  of  any 
man’s  life  we  have  never  read.  It  is  written  with  full 
knowledge  of  every  part  of  the  career  which  it  traces; 
and  it  is  written  by  a man  who  puts  down  whatever  he 
knows  exactly  as  he  believes  it  to  have  been.  His  con- 
clusion is  that  “on  peut  fouiller  sa  vie  au  microscope: 
on  y reconnaitra  des  fautes,  des  folies,  des  faiblesses, 
bien  des  souffrances  aussi,  avec  de  la  fatalit6au  fond,  pas 
de  honte  veritable,  pas  une  vile  et  indigne  action.  Les 
vrais  amis  du  poete  peuvent  done  revendiquer  pour  lui 
l’6pithete  d’honnete  homme,  sans  doute  tr&s  vulgaire, 
mais  qui,  aux  yeux  de  certains,  a encore  du  prix.” 

In  1886  Verlaine  dedicated  Les  Memoires  d’un  Veuf 
to  Lepelletier,  affirming  the  resolve,  on  his  part,  to 
“ garder  intacte  la  vielle  amiti6  si  forte  et  si  belle.” 
The  compact  has  been  kept  nobly  by  the  survivor. 

It  fnay,  indeed,  be  questioned  whether  Lepelletier  does 
not  insist  a little  too  much  on  the  bourgeois  element 
which  he  finds  in  Verlaine.  When  a man  has  suffered 
under  unjust  accusations,  it  is  natural  for  his  friends  to 
defend  him  under  whatever  aspect  seems  to  them  most 
generally  convincing.  So  it  is  interesting  to  know  that 
for  seven  years  Verlaine  was  in  a municipal  office,  the 
Bureau  des  Budgets  et  Comptes,  and  that  later,  in  1882, 
he  made  an  application,  which  was  refused,  for  leave  to 
return  to  his  former  post.  Lepelletier  reproaches  the 
authorities  for  an  action  which  he  takes  to  have  pre- 
cipitated Verlaine  into  the  final  misery  of  his  vagabondage. 
He  would  have  lived  quietly,  he  says,  and  written  in 
security.  Both  assumptions  may  be  doubted.  What 
was  bourgeois,  and  contented  with  quiet,  was  a small 
part  of  the  nature  of  one  who  was  too  strong  as  well  as 
too  weak  to  remain  within  limits.  The  terrible  force  of 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


355 


Verlaine’s  weakness  would  always,  in  the  process  of  making 
him  a poet,  have  carried  him  far  from  that  “ tranquility 
d’une  sinecure  bureaucratique  ” which  Lepelletier  strangely 
regrets  for  him.  It  is  hardly  permitted,  in  looking  back 
over  a disastrous  life  which  has  expressed  itself  in  notable 
poetry,  to  regret  that  the  end  should  have  been  attained, 
by  no  matter  what  means. 

On  moral  questions  Lepelletier  speaks  with  the  au- 
thority of  an  intimate  friendship,  and  from  a point  of 
view  which  seems  wholly  without  prejudice.  He  defends 
Verlaine  with  evident  conviction  against  the  most  serious 
charges  brought  against  him,  and  he  shows  at  least,  on 
documentary  evidence,  that  nothing  of  the  darker  part 
of  his  “ legend  ” was  ever  proved  against  him  in  any 
of  his  arrests  and  imprisonments.  Drink,  and  mad 
rages  let  loose  by  drink,  account,  ignobly  enough,  • for 
all  of  them.  In  the  famous  quarrel  with  Rimbaud,  which 
brought  him  into  prison  for  eighteen  months,  the  accusa- 
tion reads: 

“ Pour  avoir,  a Bruxelles,  le  10  juillet,  1873,  volontaire- 
ment  port4s  des  coups  et  fait  des  blessures  ayant  entrain^ 
une  incapacity  de  travail  personnel  k Arthur  Rimbaud.” 

The  whole  account  of  this  episode  is  given  by  M. 
Lepelletier  in  great  detail,  and  from  this  we  learn  that 
it  was  by  the  merest  change  of  mind  on  the  part  of  Rim- 
baud, or  by  sudden  treachery,  that  the  matter  came 
into  the  courts  at  all.  Lepelletier  supplies  an  unfavour- 
able account  of  Rimbaud,  whom  he  looks  upon  as  the 
evil  counsellor  of  Verlaine — probably  with  justice.  There 
is  little  doubt  that  Rimbaud,  apart  from  his  genuine 
touch  of  precocious  power,  which  had  its  influence  on 
the  genius  of  Verlaine,  was  a “ mauvais  sujet  ” of  a 
selfish  and  mischievous  kind.  He  was  destructive  and 


356  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


pitiless;  and  having  done  his  worst,  he  went  off  care- 
lessly into  Africa. 

It  will  surprise  some  readers  to  learn  that  Verlaine 
took  his  degree  of  “ bachelier-es-lettres,”  and  that  on 
leaving  the  Lyc4e  Bonaparte  he  received  a certificate 
placing  him  “ au  nombre  des  sujets  distingu6s  que  compte 
l’etablissement.”  He  was  well  grounded  in  Latin,  and 
fairly  well  in  English,  and  at  several  intervals  in  his 
life  attempted  to  master  Spanish,  with  the  vague  desire 
of  translating  Calderon.  At  an  early  period  he  read 
French  literature,  classical  and  modem,  with  avidity; 
translations  of  English,  German  and  Eastern  classics; 
books  of  criticism  and  philosophy. 

“ II  admirait  beaucoup  Joseph  de  Maistre.  Le  Rouge 
et  le  Noir  de  Stendhal  avait  product  sur  lui  une  forte 
impression.  II  avait  denich4,  on  ne  sait  ou,  une  Vie 
de  sainte  Th6rese,  qu’il  lisait  avec  ravissement.” 

He  was  absorbed  in  Baudelaire,  Gautier,  Leconte 
de  Lisle,  Banville;  he  read  Petrus  Borel  and  Aloysius 
Bertrand.  The  only  poem  that  remains  of  this  early 
period  is  the  “ Nocturne  Parisien  ” of  the  Poemes  Satur- 
niens,  which  dates  from  about  his  twentieth  year.  Jules 
de  Goncourt  defined  it  as  “ un  beau  poeme  sinistre  melant 
comme  une  Morgue  k Notre-Dame.”  Baudelaire,  as 
Sainte-Beuve,  in  a charming  letter  of  real  appreciation, 
pointed  out,  is  here  the  evident  “ point  de  depart,  pour 
aller  au  delA” 

The  chapter  in  which  Lepelletier  tells  the  story  of  the 
origin  of  the  most  famous  literary  movement  since  that 
of  1830,  the  “ Pamasse,”  is  one  of  the  most  entertaining 
in  the  book,  and  gives,  in  its  narrative  of  the  receptions 
“ chez  Nina  ” (a  salon  which  Lepelletier  describes  as 
the  ancestor  of  the  “ Chat  Noir  ”),  a vivid  picture  of 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


357 


the  days  when  Villiers  de  l’Isle-Adam  and  Frangois 
Copp4e  were  beginners  together.  Nina  de  Villars  was 
one  of  the  oddest  people  of  her  time:  she  made  a kind  of 
private  Bohemia  for  poets,  musicians,  all  kinds  of  artists 
and  eccentric  people,  herself  the  most  eccentric  of  them 
all.  It  was  at  her  house  that  the  members  of  the  “ Par- 
nasse  ” gathered,  while  they  selected  as  their  more  formal 
meeting-place  the  salon  of  Madame  Ricard.  It  is  not 
generally  known  that  Verlaine’s  Po&mes  Saturniens  was 
the  third  volume  to  be  issued  by  the  house  of  Lemerre, 
afterwards  to  become  a famous  “ publisher  of  poets,” 
and  it  was  in  this  volume  that  the  new  laws  of  the  Par- 
nasse  were  first  formulated — that  impassivity,  that 
“ marble  egoism,”  which  Verlaine  was  so  soon  to  reject 
for  a more  living  impulse,  but  which  neither  Leconte  de 
Lisle  nor  Heredia  was  ever  to  abandon.  When  one 
thinks  of  the  later  Verlaine,  it  is  curious  to  turn  to  that 
first  formula: 

Est-elle  en  marvre  oil  non,  le  V6nus  de  Milo? 

Verlaine’s  verse  suddenly  becomes  human  with  La 
Bonne  Chanson,  though  the  humanity  in  it  is  not  yet 
salted  as  with  fire.  It  is  the  record  of  the  event  which, 
as  Lepelletier  says,  dominated  his  whole  life ; the  marriage 
with  Mathilde  Maute,  the  young  girl  with  whom  he 
had  fallen  in  love  at  first  sight,  and  whose  desertion  of 
him,  however  explicable,  he  never  forgot  nor  forgave. 
Nothing  could  be  more  just  or  delicate  than  Lepelletier ’s 
treatment  of  the  whole  situation  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  is  right  in  saying  that  the  young  wife  “ efit  une 
grande  responsabilitt:  dans  les  d&ordres  de  l’5xistence 
d6sorbit6e  du  po£te.”  Verlaine,  as  he  says,  “ etait  bon, 
aimant,  et  c’6tait  comme  un  souffrant  qu’il  fallait  le 


358  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


traiter.”  “ Vous  n’avez  rien  compris  a ma  simplicity,” 
he  wrote  long  afterwards,  addressing  the  woman  of  whom 
Lepelletier  says,  “ II  l’aima  toujours,  il  n’aima  qu’elle.” 

With  his  marriage  Verlaine’s  disasters  begin.  Rim- 
baud enters  his  life  and  turns  the  current  of  it;  the 
vagabondage  begins,  in  France  and  England,  and  the 
letters  written  from  London  are  among  the  most  vivid 
documents  in  the  book:  thumbnail  sketches  full  of  keen 
observation.  Then  comes  his  imprisonment  and  con- 
version to  Catholicism.  Here  Lepelletier,  while  he 
gives  us  an  infinity  of  details  which  he  alone  could  give, 
adopts  an  attitude  which  we  cannot  think  to  be  jus- 
tified, and  which,  as  a matter  of  fact,  Verlaine  protested 
against  during  his  lifetime.  “ Cette  conversion  fut-elle 
profonde  et  v4ridique?  ” he  asks ; and  he  answers,  “Je 
ne  le  crois  pas.”  That  his  conversion  had  much  influence 
on  Verlaine’s  conduct  cannot  be  contended,  but  conduct 
and  belief  are  two  different  things.  Sincerity  of  the 
moment  was  his  fundamental  characteristic,  but  the 
moments  made  and  remade  his  moods  in  their  passing. 
The  religion  of  Sagesse  is  not  the  less  genuine  because 
that  grave  and  sacred  book  was  followed  by  the  revolt 
of  Parallement.  Verlaine  tried  to  explain — in  the  poems 
themselves,  in  prefaces,  and  in  conversation  with  friends — 
how  natural  it  was  to  sin  and  to  repent,  and  to  use  the 
same  childlike  words  in  the  immediate  rendering  of  sin 
and  of  repentance.  This  naivete,  which  made  any  regular 
existence  an  impossibility,  was  a part  of  him  which  gave 
a quality  to  his  work  unlike  that  of  any  other  poet  of 
our  time.  At  the  end  of  his  life  hardly  anything  but 
the  maivete  was  left,  and  the  poems  became  mere  out- 
cries and  gestures.  Lepelletier  is  justly  indignant  at 
the  action  of  Vanier  in  publishing  after  Verlaine’s  death 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


359 


the  collection  called  Invectives,  made  up  of  scraps  and 
impromptus  which  the  poet  certainly  never  intended  to 
publish.  Here  we  see  part  of  the  weakness  of  a great 
man,  who  becomes  petty  when  he  puts  off  his  true  character 
and  tries  to  be  angry.  “ J’ai  la  fureur  d’aimer,”  he  says 
somewhere,  and  there  is  no  essential  part  of  his  work 
which  is  not  the  expression  of  some  form  of  love,  gro- 
tesque or  heroic,  human  or  divine. 

Of  all  this  later,  more  and  more  miserable  part  of  the 
life  of  Verlaine,  Lepelletier  has  less  to  tell  us.  It  has 
been  sufficiently  commented  on,  not  always  by  friendly 
or  understanding  witnesses.  What  we  get  in  this  book, 
for  the  first  time,  is  a view  of  the  life  as  a whole,  with  all 
that  is  beautiful,  tragic,  and  desperate  in  it.  It  is  not 
an  apology:  it  is  a statement.  It  not  only  does  honor 
to  a great  and  unhappy  man  of  genius;  it  does  him  justice. 


360  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

(1848-1907) 

Le  Drageoir  a Epices,  1874;  Marthe:  Histoire  d’une 
Fide,  1876;  Les  Sceurs  Vatard,  1879;  Croquis  Parisiens, 
1880;  En  Menage,  1881;  A Vau-VEau,  1882;  L’Art  Mo- 
derne,  1883;  A Rebours,  1884;  Un  Dilemme,  1887;  En 
Rade,  1887;  Certains,  1889;  La  Bievre,  1890;  La-Bas, 
1891;  En  Route,  1895;  La  Cathedrale,  1898;  La  Bievre 
et  Saint-Severin,  1898;  Pages  Catholiques,  1900;  Sainte 
Lydwine  de  Schiedam,  1901;  De  Tout,  1902;  L’Oblat,  1903; 
Trois  Primitifs,  1905;  Les  Foules  de  Lourdes,  1906;  See 
also  the  short  story,  Sac  au  Dos,  in  the  Soirees  de  Medan, 
1880,  and  the  pantomime,  Pierrot  Sceptique,  1881,  in  col- 
laboration with  L6on  Hennique.  En  Route  was  trans- 
lated into  English  by  Mr.  Kegan  Paul,  in  1896;  and  La 
Cathedrale  by  Miss  Clara  Bell,  in  1898. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


361 


ARTHUR  RIMBAUD 

(1854-1891) 

Une  Saison  en  Enfer,  1873;  Les  Illuminations,  1886; 
Reliquaire,  1891  (containing  several  poems  falsely  attri- 
buted to  Rimbaud);  Les  Illuminations:  Une  Saison  en 
Enfer,  1892;  Poesies  Completes,  1895;  CEuvres,  1898. 

See  also  Paterne  Berrichon,  La  Vie  de  Jean-Arthur 
Rimbaud,  1898,  and  Lettres  de  Jean-Arthur  Rimbaud,  1899; 
Paul  Verlaine,  Les  Poetes  Maudits,  1884,  and  the  biog- 
raphy by  Verlaine  in  Les  Hommes  d’Aujourd’hui.  Mr. 
George  Moore  was  the  first  to  write  about  Rimbaud  in 
England,  in  “ Two  Unknown  Poets  ” (Rimbaud  and 
Laforgue)  in  Impressions  and  Opinions,  1891.  In  Mr. 
John  Gray’s  Silverpoints,  1893,  there  are  translations  of 
“ Charleville  ” and  “ Sensation.”  The  latter,  and  “ Les 
Chercheuses  de  Poux,”  are  translated  by  Mr.  T.  Sturge 
Moore  in  The  Vinedresser,  and  other  Poems,  1899, 


362  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


l 


JULES  LAFORGUE 

(1860-1887) 

Les  Complaintes,  1885;  L’ Imitation  de  Notre-Dame  la 
Lune,  1886;  Le  Concile  Feerique,  1886;  Moralites  Legem- 
daires,  1887;  Derniers  Vers,  1890  (a  privately  printed 
volume,  containing  Des  Fleurs  de  Bonne  Volonte,  Le  Con- 
cile Feerique,  and  Derniers  Vers);  Poesies  Completes,  1894; 
CEuvres  Completes,  Poesies,  Moralites  Legendaires,  Melanges 
Posthumes  (3  vols.),  1902,  1903. 

An  edition  of  the  Moralites  Legendaires  was  published 
in  1897,  under  the  care  of  M.  Lucien  Pissarro,  at  the  Sign 
of  the  Dial;  it  is  printed  in  Mr.  Ricketts’  admirable  type, 
and  makes  one  of  the  most  beautiful  volumes  issued  in 
French  during  this  century.  In  1896  M.  Camille  Mau- 
clair,  with  his  supple  instinct  for  contemporary  values, 
wrote  a study,  or  rather  an  eulogy,  of  Laforgue,  to  which 
M.  Maeterlinck  contributed  a few  searching  and  delicate 
words  by  way  of  preface. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


363 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

(1862) 

Serres  Chaudes,  1889;  La  Princesse  Maleine,  1890; 
Les  Aveugles  ( L’Intruse , Les  Aveugles),  1890;  L’Ornement 
des  Noces  Spirituelles,  de  Ruysbroeck  V Admirable,  1891; 
Les  Sept  Princesses,  1891;  Pelleas  et  Melisande,  1892; 
Alladine  et  Palomides,  Interieur,  La  Mart  de  Tintagiles, 
1894;  Annabella,  de  John  Ford,  1895;  Les  Disciples  a 
Sais  et  les  Fragments  de  Novalis,  1895;  Le  Tresor  des 
Humbles,  1896;  Dome  Chansons,  1896;  Aglavaine  et 
Selysette,  1896;  La  Sagesse  et  la  Destin&e,  1898;  The&tre, 
1901  (3  vols.) ; La  Vie  des  Abeilles,  1901;  Monna  Vanna, 
1902;  Le  Temple  Enseveli,  1902;  Joyzelle,  1903;  Le  Double 
Jardin,  1904;  U Intelligence  des  Fleurs,  1907. 

M.  Maeterlinck  has  had  the  good  or  bad  fortune  to 
be  more  promptly,  and  more  violently,  praised  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career  than  at  all  events  any  other  writer 
of  whom  I have  spoken  in  this  volume.  His  fame  in 
France  was  made  by  a flaming  article  of  M.  Octave 
Mirbeau  in  the  Figaro  of  August  24,  1890.  M.  Mirbeau 
greeted  him  as  the  “ Belgian  Shakepeare,”  and  expressed 
his  opinion  of  La  Princesse  Maleine  by  saying  “ M.  Maeter- 
linck has  given  us  the  greatest  work  of  genius  that  has 
been  produced  in  our  time,  and  the  most  extraordinary 
and  the  most  naive  too,  comparable  (dare  I say?)  superior 
in  beauty  to  what  is  most  beautiful  in  Shakespeare  . . . 


364  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


more  tragic  than  Macbeth,  more  extraordinary  in  thought 
than  Hamlet.”  Mr.  William  Archer  introduced  M. 
Maeterlinck  to  England  in  an  article  called  “ A Pessimist 
Playwright  ” in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  September,  1891. 
Less  enthusiastic  than  M.  Mirbeau,  he  defined  the  author 
of  La  Princesse  Maleine  as  “ a Webster  who  had  read 
Alfred  de  Musset.”  A freely  adapted  version  of  L’Intruse 
was  given  by  Mr.  Tree  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  Jan- 
uary 27,  1892,  and  since  that  time  many  of  M.  Maeter- 
linck’s plays  have  been  acted,  without  cuts,  or  with  but 
few  cuts,  at  various  London  theatres.  Several  of  his 
books  have  also  been  translated  into  English:  The  Prin- 
cesse Maleine  (by  Gerard  Harry)  and  The  Intruder  (by 
William  Wilson),  1892;  Pelleas  and  Melisande  and  The 
Sightless  (by  Laurence  Alma-Tadema),  1892;  Ruysbroeck 
and  the  Mystics  (by  J.  T.  Stoddart),  1894;  The  Treasure  of 
the  Humble  (by  A.  Sutro),  1897;  Aglavaine  and  Selysette 
(by  A.  Sutro),  1897;  Wisdom  and  Destiny  (by  A.  Sutro), 
1898;  Alladine  and  Palomides  (by  A.  Sutro),  Interior  (by 
William  Archer),  and  The  Death  of  Tintagiles  (by  A.  Sutro), 
1899. 

I have  spoken,  in  this  volume,  chiefly  of  Maeterlinck’s 
essays,  and  but  little  of  his  plays,  and  I have  said  all  that 
I had  to  say  without  special  reference  to  the  second  vol- 
ume of  essays,  La  Sagesse  et  la  Destinee.  Like  Le  Tresor 
des  Humbles,  that  book  is  a message,  a doctrine,  even  more 
than  it  is  a piece  of  literature.  It  is  a treatise  on  wisdom 
and  happiness,  on  the  search  for  happiness  because  it  is 
wisdom,  not  for  wisdom  because  it  is  happiness.  It  is  a 
book  of  patient  and  resigned  philosophy,  a very  Flemish 
philosophy,  more  resigned  than  even  Le  Tresor  des  Hum- 
bles. In  a sense  it  seems  to  aim  less  high.  An  ecstatic 
mysticism  has  given  way  to  a kind  of  prudence.  Is  this 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  AND  NOTES 


365 


coming  nearer  to  the  earth  really  an  intellectual  ascent 
or  descent?  At  least  it  is  a divergence,  and  it  probably 
indicates  a divergence  in  art  as  well  as  in  meditation. 
Yet,  while  it  is  quite  possible  to  at  least  indicate  Maeter- 
linck’s position  as  a philosopher,  it  seems  to  me  prema- 
ture to  attempt  to  define  his  position  as  a dramatist. 
Interesting  as  his  dramatic  work  has  always  been,  there 
is,  in  the  later  dramas,  so  singular  an  advance  in  all  the 
qualities  that  go  to  make  great  art,  that  I find  it  impossible 
at  this  stage  of  his  development,  to  treat  his  dramatic 
work  as  in  any  sense  the  final  expression  of  a personality. 
What  the  next  stage  of  his  development  may  be  it  is 
impossible  to  say.  He  will  not  write  more  beautiful 
dramas  than  he  has  written  in  Aglavaine  et  Selysette  and 
in  Peleas  et  Melisande.  But  he  may,  and  he  probably 
will,  write  something  which  will  move  the  general  world 
more  profoundly,  touching  it  more  closely,  in  the  manner 
of  the  great  writers,  in  whom  beauty  has  not  been  more 
beautiful  than  in  writers  less  great,  but  has  come  to  men 
with  a more  3plendid  energy. 


TRANSLATIONS 


From  Stephane  MallarmS 


I.  HERODIADE 


Herodiade. 

To  mine  own  self  I am  a wilderness. 

You  know  it,  amethyst  gardens  numberless 
Enfolded  in  the  flaming,  subtle  deep, 

Strange  gold,  that  through  the  red  earth’s 
heavy  sleep 

Has  cherished  ancient  brightness  like  a dream, 
Stones  whence  mine  eyes,  pure  jewels,  have 
their  gleam 

Of  icy  and  melodious  radiance,  you, 

Metals,  which  into  my  young  tresses  drew 
A fatal  splendour  and  their  manifold  grace! 
Thou,  woman,  born  into  these  evil  days 
Disastrous  to  the  cavern  sibylline, 

Who  speakest,  prophesying  not  of  one  divine, 
But  of  a mortal,  if  from  that  close  sheath, 

My  robes,  rustle  the  wild  enchanted  breath 
In  the  white  quiver  of  my  nakedness, 

In  the  warm  air  of  summer,  0 prophetess, 

369 


I 


370  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


(And  woman’s  body  obeys  that  ancient  claim) 
Behold  me  in  my  shivering  starry  shame, 

I die! 

The  horror  of  my  virginity 
Delights  me,  and  I would  envelop  me 
In  the  terror  of  my  tresses,  that,  by  night, 
Inviolate  reptile,  I might  feel  the  white 
And  glimmering  radiance  of  thy  frozen  fire, 
Thou  that  art  chaste  and  diest  of  desire, 
White  night  of  ice  and  of  the  cruel  snow! 
Eternal  sister,  my  lone  sister,  lo 
My  dreams  uplifted  before  thee!  now,  apart, 
So  rare  a crystal  is  my  dreaming  heart, 

I live  in  a monotonous  land  alone, 

And  all  about  me  lives  but  in  mine  own 
Image,  the  idolatrous  mirror  of  my  pride, 
Mirroring  this  HArodiade  diamond-eyed. 

I am  indeed  alone,  0 charm  and  curse! 

Nurse. 

O lady,  would  you  die  then? 

Herodiade. 

No,  poor  nurse; 

Be  calm,  and  leave  me;  prithee,  pardon  me, 
But,  ere  thou  go,  close  to  the  casement;  see 


TRANSLATIONS 


371 


How  the  seraphical  blue  in  the  dim  glass  smiles, 
But  I abhor  the  blue  of  the  sky! 

Yet  miles 

On  miles  of  rocking  waves!  Know’st  not  a 
land 

Where,  in  the  pestilent  sky,  men  see  the  hand 
Of  Venus,  and  her  shadow  in  dark  leaves? 
Thither  I go. 

Light  thou  the  wax  that  grieves 
In  the  swift  flame,  and  sheds  an  alien  tear 
Over  the  vain  gold;  wilt  not  say  in  mere 
Childishness? 

Nurse. 

Now? 

Herodiade. 

Farewell.  You  lie,  0 flower 
Of  these  chill  lips! 

I wait  the  unknown  hour, 

Or,  deaf  to  your  crying  and  that  hour  supreme, 
Utter  the  lamentation  of  the  dream 
Of  childhood  seeing  fall  apart  in  sighs 
The  icy  chaplet  of  its  reveries. 


372  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


II.  SIGH 

My  soul,  calm  sister,  towards  thy  brow, 
whereon  scarce  grieves 

An  autumn  strewn  already  with  its  russet 
leaves, 

And  towards  the  wandering  sky  of  thine  angelic 
eyes, 

Mounts,  as  in  melancholy  gardens  may  arise 

Some  faithful  fountain  sighing  whitely  towards 
the  blue! 

Towards  the  blue  pale  and  pure  that  sad 
October  knew, 

When,  in  those  depths,  it  mirrored  languors 
infinite, 

And  agonising  leaves  upon  the  waters  white, 

Windily  drifting,  traced  a furrow  cold  and  dun, 

WThere,  in  one  long  last  ray,  lingered  the  yellow 


sun. 


TRANSLATIONS 


373 


III.  SEA-WIND 

The  flesh  is  sad,  alas!  and  all  the  books  are 
read. 

Flight,  only  flight!  I feel  that  birds  are  wild 
to  tread 

The  floor  of  unknown  foam,  and  to  attain  the 
skies! 

Nought,  neither  ancient  gardens  mirrored 
in  the  eyes, 

Shall  hold  this  heart  that  bathes  in  waters  its 
delight, 

0 nights!  nor  yet  my  waking  lamp,  whose 

lonely  light 

Shadows  the  vacant  paper,  whiteness  profits 
best, 

Nor  the  young  wife  who  rocks  her  baby  on  her 
breast. 

1 will  depart!  O steamer,  swaying  rope  and 

spar, 

Lift  anchor  for  exotic  lands  that  lie  afar! 

A weariness,  outworn  by  cruel  hopes,  still 
clings 

To  the  last  farewell  handkerchief’s  last  beckon- 
ings! 


374  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


And  are  not  these,  the  masts  inviting  storms, 
not  these 

That  an  awakening  wind  bends  over  wrecking 
seas, 

Lost,  not  a sail,  a sail,  a flowering  isle,  ere  long? 

But,  0 my  heart,  hear  thou,  hear  thou  the 
sailors’  song! 


TRANSLATIONS 


375 


IV.  ANGUISH 

To-night  I do  not  come  to  conquer  thee, 

0 Beast  that  dost  the  sins  of  the  whole  world 

bear, 

Nor  with  my  kisses’  weary  misery 
Wake  a sad  tempest  in  thy  wanton  hair; 

It  is  that  heavy  and  that  dreamless  sleep 

1 ask  of  the  close  curtains  of  thy  bed, 

Which,  after  all  thy  treacheries,  folds  thee 

deep, 

Who  knowest  oblivion  better  than  the  dead. 
For  Vice,  that  gnaws  with  keener  tooth  than 
Time, 

Brands  me  as  thee,  of  barren  conquest  proud; 
But  while  thou  guardest  in  thy  breast  of  stone 
A heart  that  fears  no  fang  of  any  crime, 

I wander  palely,  haunted  by  my  shroud, 
Fearing  to  die  if  I but  sleep  alone. 


/ 

i 


376  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


From  Paul  Verlaine:  Fetes  Galantes 

I.  CLAIR  DE  LUNE 

Your  soul  is  a sealed  garden,  and  there  go 
With  masque  and  bergamasque  fair  companies 
Playing  on  lutes  and  dancing  and  as  though 
Sad  under  their  fantastic  fripperies. 

Though  they  in  minor  keys  go  carolling 
Of  love  the  conqueror  and  of  life  the  boon 
They  seem  to  doubt  the  happiness  they  sing 
And  the  song  melts  into  the  light  of  the  moon, 

The  sad  light  of  the  moon,  so  lovely  fair 
That  all  the  birds  dream  in  the  leafy  shade 
And  the  slim  fountains  sob  into  the  air 
Among  the  marble  statues  in  the  glade. 


TRANSLATIONS 


377 


II.  PA$T#MIME 

Pierrot,  no  sentimental  swain, 

Washes  a pate  down  again 
With  furtive  flagons,  white  and  red. 

Cassandre,  with  demure  content, 
Greets  with  a tear  of  sentiment 
His  nephew  disinherited. 

That  blackguard  of  a Harlequin 
Pirouettes,  and  plots  to  win 
His  Columbine  that  flits  and  flies. 

Columbine  dreams,  and  starts  to  find 
A sad  heart  sighing  in  the  wind, 

And  in  her  heart  a voice  that  sighs. 


378  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


III.  SUR  L’HERBE 

The  Abb6  wanders. — Marquis,  now 
Set  straight  your  periwig,  and  speak! 

— This  Cyprus  wine  is  heavenly,  how 
Much  less,  Camargo,  than  your  cheek! 

— My  goddess  . . . — Do,  mi,  sol,  la,  si. 

— Abbe,  such  treason  who’ll  forgive  you? 

— May  I die,  ladies,  if  there  be 
A star  in  heaven  I will  not  give  you ! 

— I’d  be  my  lady’s  lapdog;  then  . . . 

— Shepherdess,  kiss  your  shepherd  soon, 
Shepherd,  come  kiss  . . . — Well,  gentlemen? 
— Do,  mi,  so.  — Hey,  good-night,  good  moon! 


TRANSLATIONS 


379 


IV.  L’ALLEE 

As  in  the  age  of  shepherd  king  and  queen, 
Painted  and  frail  amid  her  nodding  bows, 
Under  the  sombre  branches  and  between 
The  green  and  mossy  garden-ways  she  goes, 
With  little  mincing  airs  one  keeps  to  pet 
A darling  and  provoking  perroquet. 

Her  long-trained  robe  is  blue,  the  fan  she  holds 
With  fluent  fingers  girt  with  heavy  rings, 

So  vaguely  hints  of  vague  erotic  things 
That  her  eye  smiles,  musing  among  its  folds. 
— Blonde  too,  a tiny  nose,  a rosy  mouth, 
Artful  as  that  sly  patch  that  makes  more  sly, 
In  her  divine  unconscious  pride  of  youth, 

The  slightly  simpering  sparkle  of  the  eye. 


380  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


V.  A LA  PROMENADE 

The  sky  so  pale,  and  the  trees,  such  frail  things, 
Seem  as  if  smiling  on  our  bright  array 
That  flits  so  light  and  gay  upon  the  way 
With  indolent  airs  and  fluttering  as  of  wings. 

I 

The  fountain  wrinkles  under  a faint  wind, 

And  all  the  sifted  sunlight  falling  through 
The  lime-trees  of  the  shadowy  avenue 
Comes  to  us  blue  and  shadowy-pale  and 
thinned. 

Faultlessly  fickle,  and  yet  fond  enough, 

With  fonds  hearts  not  too  tender  to  be  free, 
We  wander  whispering  deliciously, 

And  every  lover  leads  a lady-love, 

Whose  imperceptible  and  roguish  hand 
Darts  now  and  then  a dainty  tap,  the  lip 
Revenges  on  an  extreme  finger-tip, 

The  tip  of  the  left  little  finger,  and, 

The  deed  being  so  excessive  and  uncouth, 

A duly  freezing  look  deals  punishment, 

That  in  the  instant  of  the  act  is  blent 
With  a shy  pity  pouting  in  the  mouth. 


TRANSLATIONS 


381 


VI.  DANS  LA  GROTTE 

Stay,  let  me  die,  since  I am  true, 

For  my  distress  will  not  delay, 

And  the  Hyrcanian  tigress  ravening  for  prey 
Is  as  a little  lamb  to  you. 

Yes,  here  within,  cruel  Clymene, 

This  steel  which  in  how  many  wars 
How  many  a Cyrus  slew,  or  Scipio,  now  pre- 
pares 

To  end  my  life  and  end  my  pain. 

But  nay,  what  need  of  steel  have  I 
To  haste  my  passage  to  the  shades? 

Did  not  Love  pierce  my  heart,  beyond  all 
mortal  aids, 

With  the  first  arrow  of  your  eye? 


382  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


VII.  LES  INGENUS 

High  heels  and  long  skirts  intercepting  them, 
So  that,  according  to  the  wind  or  way, 

An  ankle  peeped  and  vanished  as  in  play; 

And  well  we  loved  the  malice  of  the  game. 

Sometimes  an  insect  with  its  jealous  sting 
Some  fair  one’s  whiter  neck  disquieted, 

From  which  the  gleams  of  sudden  whiteness 
shed 

Met  in  our  eyes  a frolic  welcoming. 

The  stealthy  autumn  evening  faded  out. 

And  the  fair  creatures  dreaming  by  our  side 
Words  of  such  subtle  savour  to  us  sighed 
That  since  that  time  our  souls  tremble  and 
doubt. 


TRANSLATIONS 


383 


VIII.  CORTEGE 

A silver-vested  monkey  trips 
And  pirouettes  before  the  face 
Of  one  who  twists  a kerchief’s  lace 
Between  her  well-gloved  finger-tips. 

A little  negro,  a red  elf, 

Carries  her  dropping  train,  and  holds 
At  arm’s  length  all  the  heavy  folds, 
Watching  each  fold  displace  itself. 

The  monkey  never  lets  his  eyes 
Wander  from  the  fair  woman’s  breast, 
White  wonder  that  to  be  possessed 
Would  call  a god  out  of  the  skies. 

Sometimes  the  little  negro  seems 
To  lift  his  sumptuous  burden  up 
Higher  than  need  be,  in  the  hope 
Of  seeing  what  all  night  he  dreams. 

She  goes  by  corridor  and  stair, 

Still  to  the  insolent  appeals 
Of  her  familiar  animals 
Indifferent  or  unaware. 


384  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


IX.  LES  COQUILLAGES 

Each  shell  inerusted  in  the  grot 
Where  we  two  loved  each  other  well 
An  aspect  of  its  own  has  got. 

The  purple  of  a purple  shell 

Is  our  souls’  colour  when  they  make 

Our  burning  heart’s  blood  visible. 

This  pallid  shell  affects  to  take 
Thy  languors,  when  thy  love-tired  eyes 
Rebuke  me  for  my  mockery’s  sake. 

This  counterfeits  the  harmonies 
Of  thy  pink  ear,  and  this  might  be 
Thy  plump  short  nape  with  rosy  dyes. 

But  one,  among  these,  troubled  me. 


TRANSLATIONS 


385 


X.  EN  PATINANT 

We  were  the  victims,  you  and  I, 
Madame,  of  mutual  self  deceits; 

And  that  which  set  our  brains  awry 
May  well  have  been  the  summer  heats. 

And  the  spring  too,  if  I recall, 
Contributed  to  spoil  our  play, 

And  yet  its  share,  I think,  was  small 
In  leading  you  and  me  astray. 

For  air  in  springtime  is  so  fresh 
That  rose-buds  Love  has  surely  meant 
To  match  the  roses  of  the  flesh 
Have  odours  almost  innocent; 

And  even  the  lilies  that  outpour 
Their  biting  odours  where  the  sun 
Is  new  in  heaven,  do  but  the  more 
Enliven  and  enlighten  one, 

So  stealthily  the  zephyr  blows 
A mocking  breath  that  renders  back 
The  heart’s  rest  and  the  soul’s  repose 
And  the  flower’s  aphrodisiac, 


i 


386  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


And  the  five  senses,  peeping  out, 

Take  up  their  station  at  the  feast, 

But,  being  by  themselves,  without 
Troubling  the  reason  in  the  least. 

That  was  the  time  of  azure  skies, 

(Madame,  do  you  remember  it?) 

And  sonnets  to  my  lady’s  eyes, 

And  cautious  kisses  not  too  sweet. 

Free  from  all  passion’s  idle  pother, 

Full  of  mere  kindliness,  how  long, 

How  well  we  liked  not  loved  each  other, 
Without  one  rapture  or  one  wrong! 

Ah,  happy  hours!  But  summer  came: 
Farewell,  fresh  breezes  of  the  spring! 

A wind  of  pleasure  like  a flame 
Leapt  on  our  senses  wondering. 

Strange  flowers,  fair  crimson-hearted  flowers 
Poured  their  ripe  odours  over  us, 

And  evil  voices  of  the  hours 
Whispered  above  us  in  the  bougns. 

We  yielded  to  it  all,  ah  me! 

What  vertigo  of  fools  held  fast 

Our  senses  in  its  ecstasy 

Until  the  heat  of  summer  passed? 


TRANSLATIONS 


387 


There  were  vain  tears  and  vainer  laughter, 
And  hands  indefinitely  pressed, 

Moist  sadnesses,  and  swoonings  after, 

And  what  vague  void  within  the  breast? 

But  autumn  came  to  our  relief, 

Its  light  grown  cold,  its  gusts  grown  rough, 
Came  to  remind  us,  sharp  and  brief, 

That  we  had  wantoned  long  enough, 

And  led  us  quickly  to  recover 
The  elegance  demanded  of 
Every  quite  irreproachable  lover 
And  every  seemly  lady-love. 

■ . v »<?  " . 

Now  it  is  winter,  and,  alas, 

Our  backers  tremble  for  their  stake; 

Already  other  sledges  pass 
And  leave  us  toiling  in  their  wake. 

Put  both  your  hands  into  your  muff, 

Sit  back,  now,  steady!  off  we  go. 

Fanchon  will  tell  us  soon  enough 
Whatever  news  there  is  to  know. 


388  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XI.  FANTOCHES 

Scaramouche  waves  a threatening  hand 
To  Pulcinella,  and  they  stand, 

Two  shadows,  black  against  the  moon. 

The  old  doctor  of  Bologna  pries 
For  simples  with  impassive  eyes, 

And  mutters  o’er  a magic  rune. 

The  while  his  daughter,  scarce  half-dressed, 
Glides  slyly  ’neath  the  trees,  in  quest 
Of  her  bold  pirate  lover’s  sail; 

Her  pirate  from  the  Spanish  main, 

Whose  passion  thrills  her  in  the  pain 
Of  the  loud  languorous  nightingale. 


TRANSLATIONS 


389 


XII.  CYTHERE 

By  favourable  breezes  fanned, 

A trellised  harbour  is  at  hand 
To  shield  us  from  the  summer  airs; 

The  scent  of  roses,  fainting  sweet, 

Afloat  upon  the  summer  heat, 

Blends  with  the  perfume  that  she  wears. 

True  to  the  promise  her  eyes  gave, 

She  ventures  all,  and  her  mouth  rains 
A dainty  fever  through  my  veins; 

And,  Love  fulfilling  all  things,  save 
Hunger,  we  ’scape,  with  sweets  and  ices, 
The  folly  of  Love’s  sacrifices. 


390  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XIII.  EN  BATEAU 

The  shepherd’s  star  with  trembling  glint 
Drops  in  black  water;  at  the  hint 
The  pilot  fumbles  for  his  flint. 

Now  is  the  time  or  never,  sirs. 

No  hand  that  wanders  wisely  errs: 

I touch  a hand,  and  is  it  hers? 

The  knightly  Atys  strikes  the  strings, 
And  to  the  faithless  Chloris  flings 
A look  that  speaks  of  many  things. 

The  abb6  has  absolved  again 
Egl6,  the  viscount  all  in  vain 
Has  given  his  hasty  heart  the  rein. 

Meanwhile  the  moon  is  up  and  streams 
Upon  the  skiff  that  flies  and  seems 
To  float  upon  a tide  of  dreams. 


TRANSLATIONS 


391 


XIV.  LE  FAUNE 

An  aged  faun  of  old  red  clay 
Laughs  from  the  grassy  bowling-green, 
Foretelling  doubtless  some  decay 
Of  mortal  moments  so  serene 

That  lead  us  lightly  on  our  way 
(Love’s  piteous  pilgrims  have  we  been!) 
To  this  last  hour  that  runs  away 
Dancing  to  the  tambourine. 


392  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XV.  MANDOLINE 

The  singers  of  serenades 
Whisper  their  faded  vows 
Unto  fair  listening  maids 
Under  the  singing  boughs. 

Tircis,  Aminte,  are  there, 

Clitandre  has  waited  long, 

And  Damis  for  many  a fair 
Tyrant  makes  many  a song. 

Their  short  vests,  silken  and  bright, 
Their  long  pale  silken  trains, 

Their  elegance  of  delight, 

Twine  soft  blue  silken  chains. 

And  the  mandolines  and  they, 
Faintlier  breathing,  swoon 
Into  the  rose  and  grey 
Ecstasy  of  the  moon. 


TRANSLATIONS 


393 


XVI.  A CLYMENE 

Mystical  strains  unheard, 

A song  without  a word, 
Dearest,  because  thine  eyes, 
Pale  as  the  skies, 

Because  thy  voice,  remote 
As  the  far  clouds  that  float 
Veiling  for  me  the  whole 
Heaven  of  the  soul, 

Because  the  stately  scent 
Of  thy  swan’s  whiteness,  blent 
With  the  white  lily’s  bloom 
Of  thy  perfume, 

Ah!  because  thy  dear  love, 
The  music  breathed  above 
By  angels  halo-crowned, 

Odour  and  sound, 

Hath,  in  my  subtle  heart, 

With  some  mysterious  art 
Transposed  thy  harmony, 

So  let  it  be! 


394  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XVII.  LETTRE 

Far  from  your  sight  removed  by  thankless  cares 
(The  gods  are  witness  when  a lover  swears) 

I languish  and  I die,  Madame,  as  still 
My  use  is,  which  I punctually  fulfil, 

And  go,  through  heavy-hearted  woes  conveyed, 
Attended  ever  by  your  lovely  shade, 

By  day  in  thought,  by  night  in  dreams  of  hell, 
And  day  and  night,  Madame,  adorable! 

So  that  at  length  my  dwindling  body  lost 
In  very  soul,  I too  become  a ghost, 

I too,  and  in  the  lamentable  stress 
Of  vain  desires  remembering  happiness, 
Remembered  kisses,  now,  alas,  unfelt, 

My  shadow  shall  into  your  shadow  melt. 

Meanwhile,  dearest,  your  most  obedient  slave. 

How  does  the  sweet  society  behave, 

Thy  cat,  thy  dog,  thy  parrot?  and  is  she 
Still,  as  of  old,  the  black-eyed  Silvanie 
(I  had  loved  black  eyes  if  thine  had  not  been 
blue) 

Who  ogled  me  at  moments,  palsambleu! 


TRANSLATIONS 


395 


Thy  tender  friend  and  thy  sweet  confidant? 
One  dream  there  is,  Madame,  long  wont  to 
haunt 

This  too  impatient  heart : to  pour  the  earth 
And  all  its  treasures  (of  how  little  worth!) 
Before  your  feet  as  tokens  of  a love 
Equal  to  the  most  famous  flames  that  move 
The  hearts  of  men  to  conquer  all  but  death. 
Cleopatra  was  less  loved,  yes,  on  my  faith, 

By  Antony  or  Caesar  than  you  are, 

Madame,  by  me,  who  truly  would  by  far 
Out-do  the  deeds  of  Caesar  for  a smile, 

0 Cleopatra,  queen  of  word  and  wile, 

Or,  for  a kiss,  take  flight  with  Antony 

With  this,  farewell,  dear,  and  no  more  from  me; 
How  can  the  time  it  takes  to  read  it,  quite 
Be  worth  the  trouble  that  it  took  to  write? 


396  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XVIII.  LES  INDOLENTS 

Bah!  spite  of  Fate,  that  says  us  nay, 
Suppose  we  die  together,  eh? 

— A rare  conclusion  you  discover 

— What’s  rare  is  good.  Let  us  die  so, 
Like  lovers  in  Boccaccio. 

— Ha!  ha!  ha!  you  fantastic  lover! 

— Nay,  not  fantastic.  If  you  will, 
Fond,  surely  irreproachable. 

Suppose,  then,  that  we  die  together? 

— Good  sir,  your  jests  are  fitlier  told 
Than  when  you  speak  of  love  or  gold. 
Why  speak  at  all,  in  this  glad  weather? 

Whereat,  behold  them  once  again, 
Tircis  beside  his  Dorimene, 

Not  far  from  two  blithe  rustic  rovers, 

For  some  caprice  of  idle  breath 
Deferring  a delicious  death. 

Ha!  ha!  ha!  what  fantastic  lovers! 


TRANSLATIONS 


397 


XIX.  COLOMBINE 

The  foolish  Leander, 
Cape-covered  Cassander, 

And  which 
Is  Pierrot?  ’tis  he 
With  the  hop  of  a flea 
Leaps  the  ditch; 

And  Harlequin  who 
Rehearses  anew 
His  sly  task, 

With  his  dress  that’s  a wonder, 
And  eyes  shining  under 
His  mask; 

Mi,  sol,  mi,  fa,  do! 

How  gaily  they  go, 

And  they  sing 

And  they  laugh  and  they  twirl 
Round  the  feet  of  a girl 
Like  the  Spring, 


398  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


Whose  eyes  are  as  green 
As  a cat’s  are,  and  keen 
As  its  claws, 

And  her  eyes  without  frown 
Bid  all  new-comers1  Down 
With  your  paws! 

On  they  go  with  the  force 
Of  the  stars  in  their  course, 
And  the  speed: 

O tell  me  toward  what 
Disaster  unthought, 

Without  heed 

The  implacable  fair, 

A rose  in  her  hair, 

Holding  up 
Her  skirts  as  she  runs 
Leads  this  dance  of  the  dunce 
And  the  dupe? 


TRANSLATIONS 


399 


XX.  L’ AMOUR  PAR  TERRE 

The  other  night  a sudden  wind  laid  low 
The  Love,  shooting  an  arrow  at  a mark, 

In  the  mysterious  corner  of  the  park, 
Whose  smile  disquieted  us  long  ago. 

The  wind  has  overthrown  him,  and  above 
His  scattered  dust,  how  sad  it  is  to  spell 
The  artist’s  name  still  faintly  visible 
Upon  the  pedestal  without  its  Love, 

How  sad  it  is  to  see  the  pedestal 
Still  standing!  as  in  dream  I seem  to  hear 
Prophetic  voices  whisper  in  my  ear 
The  lonely  and  despairing  end  of  all. 

How  sad  it  is!  Why,  even  you  have  found 
A tear  for  it,  although  your  frivolous  eye 
Laughs  at  the  gold  and  purple  butterfly 
Poised  on  the  piteous  litter  on  the  ground. 


400  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


XXI.  EN  SOURDINE 

Calm  where  twilight  leaves  have  stilled 
With  their  shadow  light  and  sound, 

Let  our  silent  love  be  filled 
With  a silence  as  profound. 

Let  our  ravished  senses  blend 
Heart  and  spirit,  thine  and  mine, 

With  vague  languors  that  descend 
From  the  branches  of  the  pine. 

Close  thine  eyes  against  the  day, 

Fold  thine  arms  across  thy  breast, 

And  for  ever  turn  away 
All  desire  of  all  but  rest. 

Let  the  lulling  breaths  that  pass 
In  soft  wrinkles  at  thy  feet, 

Tossing  all  the  tawny  grass, 

This  and  only  this  repeat. 

And  when  solemn  evening 
Dims  the  forest’s  dusky  air, 

Then  the  nightingale  shall  sing 
The  delight  of  our  despair. 


TRANSLATIONS 


401 


XXII.  COLLOQUE  SENTIMENTAL 

In  the  old  park,  solitary  and  vast, 

Over  the  frozen  ground  two  forms  once  passed. 

Their  lips  were  languid  and  their  eyes  were 
dead, 

And  hardly  could  be  heard  the  words  they  said. 

In  the  old  park,  solitary  and  vast, 

Two  ghosts  once  met  to  summon  up  the  past. 

— Do  you  remember  our  old  ecstasy? 

— Why  would  you  bring  it  back  again  to  me? 

— Do  you  still  dream  as  you  dreamed  long  ago? 

Does  your  heart  beat  to  my  heart’s  beating? 
—No. 

— Ah,  those  old  days,  what  joys  have  those 
days  seen 

When  your  lips  met  my  lips! — It  may  have 
been. 

— How  blue  the  sky  was,  and  our  hope  how 
light! 

— Hope  has  flown  helpless  back  into  the  night. 

They  walked  through  weeds  withered  and 
grasses  dead, 

And  only  the  night  heard  the  words  they  said. 


402  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


From  Poemes  Saturniens 

I.  SOLEILS  COUCHANTS 

Pale  dawn  delicately 
Over  earth  has  spun 
The  sad  melancholy 
Of  the  setting  sun. 

Sad  melancholy 
Brings  oblivion 
In  sad  songs  to  me 
With  the  setting  sun. 

And  the  strangest  dreams, 
Dreams  like  suns  that  set 
On  the  banks  of  the  streams, 
Ghost  and  glory  met, 

To  my  sense  it  seems, 

Pass,  and  without  let, 

Like  great  suns  that  set 
On  the  banks  of  streams. 


TRANSLATIONS 


403 


II.  CHANSON  D’AUTOMNE 

When  a sighing  begins 
In  the  violins 
Of  the  autumn-song, 

My  heart  is  drowned 
In  the  slow  sound 
Languorous  and  long. 

Pale  as  with  pain, 

Breath  fails  me  when 
The  hour  tolls  deep. 

My  thoughts  recover 
The  days  that  are  over, 
And  I weep. 

And  I go 

Where  the  winds  know, 
Broken  and  brief, 

To  and  fro, 

As  the  winds  blow 
A dead  leaf. 


404  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


III.  FEMME  ET  CHATTE 

They  were  at  play,  she  and  her  cat, 

And  it  was  marvellous  to  mark 
The  white  paw  and  the  white  hand  pat 
Each  other  in  the  deepening  dark. 

The  stealthy  little  lady  hid 
Under  her  mittens’  silken  sheath 
Her  deadly  agate  nails  that  thrid 
The  silk-like  dagger-points  of  death. 

The  cat  purred  primly  and  drew  in 
Her  claws  that  were  of  steel  filed  thin: 
The  devil  was  in  it  all  the  same. 

And  in  the  boudoir,  while  a shout 
Of  laughter  in  the  air  rang  out, 

Four  sparks  of  phosphor  shone  like  flame. 


TRANSLATIONS 


406 


From  La  Bonne  Chanson 

I 

The  white  moon  sits 
And  seems  to  brood 
Where  a swift  voice  flits 
From  each  branch  in  the  wood 
That  the  tree-tops  cover.  . . . 

O lover,  my  lover! 

The  pool  in  the  meadows 
Like  a looking-glass 
Casts  back  the  shadows 
That  over  it  pass 
Of  the  willow-bower.  . . . 

Let  us  dream:  ’tis  the  hour.  . . . 

A tender  and  vast 

Lull  of  content 

Like  a cloud  is  cast 

From  the  firmament 

Where  one  planet  is  bright.  . . . 

’Tis  the  hour  of  delight. 


406  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


II 

The  fireside,  the  lamp’s  little  narrow  light; 

The  dream  with  head  on  hand,  and  the  delight 
Of  eyes  that  lose  themselves  in  loving  looks; 
The  hour  of  steaming  tea  and  of  shut  books; 
The  solace  to  know  evening  almost  gone; 

The  dainty  weariness  of  waiting  on 
The  nuptial  shadow  and  night’s  softest  bliss; 
Ah,  it  is  this  that  without  respite,  this 
That  without  stay,  my  tender  fancy  seeks, 
Mad  with  the  months  and  furious  with  the 
weeks. 


TRANSLATIONS 


407 


From  Romances  sans  Paroles 
I 

’Tis  the  ecstasy  of  repose, 

’Tis  love  when  tired  lids  close, 

’Tis  the  wood’s  long  shuddering 
In  the  embrace  of  the  wind, 

’Tis,  where  grey  boughs  are  thinned, 
Little  voices  that  sing. 

O fresh  and  frail  is  the  sound 
That  twitters  above,  around, 

Like  the  sweet  tiny  sigh 
That  lies  in  the  shaken  grass; 

Or  the  sound  when  waters  pass 
And  the  pebbles  shrink  and  cry. 

What  soul  is  this  that  complains 
Over  the  sleeping  plains, 

And  what  is  it  that  it  saith? 

Is  it  mine,  is  it  thine, 

This  lowly  hymn  I divine 

In  the  warm  night,  low  as  a breath? 


408  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


II 

I divine,  through  the  veil  of  a murmuring, 
The  subtle  contour  of  voices  gone, 

And  I see,  in  the  glimmering  lights  that  sing, 
The  promise,  pale  love,  of  a future  dawn. 

And  my  soul  and  my  heart  in  trouble 
What  are  they  but  an  eye  that  sees, 

As  through  a mist  an  eye  sees  double, 

Airs  forgotten  of  songs  like  these? 

O to  die  of  no  other  dying, 

Love,  than  this  that  computes  the  showers 
Of  old  hours  and  of  new  hours  flying: 

O to  die  of  the  swing  of  the  hours’ 


TRANSLATIONS 


409 


III 

Tears  in  my  heart  that  weeps, 

Like  the  rain  upon  the  town. 

What  drowsy  languor  steeps 
In  tears  my  heart  that  weeps? 

O sweet  sound  of  the  rain 
On  earth  and  on  the  roofs! 

For  a heart’s  weary  pain 
O the  song  of  the  rain! 

Vain  tears,  vain  tears,  my  heart! 
What,  none  hath  done  thee  wrong? 
Tears  without  reason  start 
From  my  disheartened  heart. 

This  is  the  weariest  woe, 

O heart,  of  love  and  hate 
Too  weary,  not  to  know 
Why  thou  hast  all  this  woe. 


410  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


IV 

A frail  hand  in  the  rose-grey  evening 
Kisses  the  shining  keys  that  hardly  stir, 

While,  with  the  light,  small  flutter  of  a wing, 
And  old  song,  like  an  old  tired  wanderer, 

Goes  very  softly,  as  if  trembling, 

About  the  room  long  redolent  of  Her. 

What  lullaby  is  this  that  comes  again 
To  dandle  my  poor  being  with  its  breath? 
What  wouldst  thou  have  of  me,  gay  laughing 
strain? 

What  hadst  thou,  desultory  faint  refrain 
That  now  into  the  garden  to  thy  death 
Floatest  through  the  half-opened  window-pane? 


TRANSLATIONS 


411 


V 

0 sad,  sad  was  my  soul,  alas! 

For  a woman,  a woman’s  sake  it  was. 

1 have  had  no  comfort  since  that  day, 
Although  my  heart  went  its  way, 

Although  my  heart  and  my  soul  went 
From  the  woman  into  banishment. 

I have  had  no  comfort  since  that  day, 
Although  my  heart  went  its  way. 

And  my  heart,  being  sore  in  me, 

Said  to  my  soul : How  can  this  be, 

How  can  this  be  or  have  been  thus, 

This  proud,  sad  banishment  of  us? 

My  soul  said  to  my  heart:  Do  I 
Know  what  snare  we  are  tangled  by, 

Seeing  that,  banished,  we  know  not  whether 
We  are  divided  or  together? 


412  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


VI 

Wearily  the  plain’s 
Endless  length  expands; 

The  snow  shines  like  grains 
Of  the  shifting  sands. 

Light  of  day  is  none, 

Brazen  is  the  sky; 

Overhead  the  moon 
Seems  to  live  and  die. 

Where  the  woods  are  seen, 
Grey  the  oak-trees  lift 
Through  the  vaporous  screen 
Like  the  clouds  that  drift. 

Light  of  day  is  none, 

Brazen  is  the  sky; 

Overhead  the  moon 
Seems  to  live  and  die. 

Broken-winded  crow, 

And  you,  lean  wolves,  when 
The  sharp  north-winds  blow, 
What  do  you  do  then? 

Wearily  the  plain’s 
Endless  length  expands; 

The  snow  shines  like  grains 
Of  the  shifting  sands. 


TRANSLATIONS 


413 


VII 

There’s  a flight  of  green  and  red 
In  the  hurry  of  hills  and  rails, 
Through  the  shadowy  twilight  shed 
By  the  lamps  as  daylight  pales. 

Dim  gold  light  flushes  to  blood 
In  humble  hollows  far  down; 

Birds  sing  low  from  a wood 
Of  barren  trees  without  crown. 

Scarcely  more  to  be  felt 
Than  that  autumn  is  gone; 
Languors,  lulled  in  me,  melt 
In  the  still  air’s  monotone. 


414  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


VIII.  SPLEEN 

The  roses  were  all  red, 

The  ivy  was  all  black : 

Dear,  if  you  turn  your  head, 

All  my  despairs  come  back. 

The  sky  was  too  blue,  too  kind, 

The  sea  too  green,  and  the  air 
Too  calm:  and  I know  in  my  mind 
I shall  wake  and  not  find  you  there. 

I am  tired  of  the  box-tree’s  shine 
And  the  holly’s,  that  never  will  pass, 
And  the  plain’s  unending  line, 

And  of  all  but  you,  alas! 


TRANSLATIONS 


415 


IX.  STREETS 

Dance  the  jig! 

I loved  best  her  pretty  eyes 
Clearer  than  stars  in  any  skies, 

I loved  her  eyes  for  their  dear  lies. 

Dance  the  jig! 

And  ah ! the  ways,  the  ways  she  had 
Of  driving  a poor  lover  mad: 

It  made  a man’s  heart  sad  and  glad. 

Dance  the  jig! 

Butjnow  I find  the  old  kisses  shed 
From  her  flower-mouth  a rarer  red 
Now  that  her  heart  to  mine  is  dead. 

Dance  the  jig! 

And  I recall,  now  I recall 

Old  days  and  hours,  and  ever  shall, 

And  that  is  best,  and  best  of  all. 


Dance  the  jig! 


416  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


From  Jadis  et  Nagubre 

I.  ART  POETIQUE 

Music  first  and  foremost  of  all! 

Choose  your  measure  of  odd  not  even, 

Let  it  melt  in  the  air  of  heaven, 

Pose  not,  poise  not,  but  rise  and  fall. 

Choose  your  words,  but  think  not  whether 
Each  to  other  of  old  belong: 

What  so  dear  as  the  dim  grey  song 
Where  clear  and  vague  are  joined  together? 

’Tis  veils  of  beauty  for  beautiful  eyes, 

’Tis  the  trembling  light  of  the  naked  noon, 
’Tis  a medley  of  blue  and  gold,  the  moon 
And  stars  in  the  cool  of  autumn  skies. 

Let  every  shape  of  its  shade  be  born; 

Colour,  away!  come  to  me,  shade! 

Only  of  shade  can  the  marriage  be  made 
Of  dream  with  dream  and  of  flute  with  horn. 


TRANSLATIONS 


417 


Shun  the  Point,  lest  death  with  it  come, 

Unholy  laughter  and  cruel  wit 

(For  the  eyes  of  the  angels  weep  at  it) 

And  all  the  garbage  of  scullery-scum. 

Take  Eloquence,  and  wring  the  neck  of  him! 
You  had  better,  by  force,  from  time  to  time, 
Put  a little  sense  in  the  head  of  Rhyme: 

If  you  watch  him  not,  you  will  be  at  the  beck 
of  him. 

O,  who  shall  tell  us  the  wrongs  of  Rhyme? 
What  witless  savage  or  what  deaf  boy 
Has  made  for  us  this  twopenny  toy 
Whose  bells  ring  hollow  and  out  of  time? 

Music  always  and  music  still! 

Let  your  verse  be  the  wandering  thing 
That  flutters  in  flight  from  a soul  on  the  wing 
Towards  other  skies  at  a new  whim’s  will. 

Let  your  verse  be  the  luck  of  the  lure 
Afloat  on  the  winds  that  at  morning  hint 
Of  the  odours  of  thyme  and  the  savour  of 
mint  . . . 

And  all  the  rest  is  literature. 


418  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


II.  MEZZETIN  CHANTANT 

Go,  and  with  never  a care 
But  the  care  to  keep  happiness! 
Crumple  a silken  dress 
And  snatch  a song  in  the  air. 

Hear  the  moral  of  all  the  wise 
In  a world  where  happy  folly 
Is  wiser  than  melancholy: 

Forget  the  hour  as  it  flies! 

The  one  thing  needful  on  earth,  it 
Is  not  to  be  whimpering. 

Is  life  after  all  a thing 
Real  enough  to  be  worth  it? 


TRANSLATIONS 


419 


From  Sagesse 

I 

The  little  hands  that  once  were  mine, 

The  hands  I loved,  the  lovely  hands, 
After  the  roadways  and  the  strands, 

And  realms  and  kingdoms  once  divine, 

And  mortal  loss  of  all  that  seems 
Lost  with  the  old  sad  pagan  things, 

Royal  as  in  the  days  of  kings 
The  dear  hands  open  to  me  dreams. 

Hands  of  dream,  hands  of  holy  flame 
Upon  my  soul  in  blessing  laid, 

What  is  it  that  these  hands  have  said 
That  my  soul  hears  and  swoons  to  them? 

Is  it  a phantom,  this  pure  sight 
Of  mother’s  love  made  tenderer, 

Of  spirit  with  spirit  linked  to  share 
The  mutual  kinship  of  delight? 

Good  sorrow,  dear  remorse,  and  ye, 

Blest  dreams,  O hands  ordained  of  heaven 
To  tell  me  if  I am  forgiven, 

Make  but  the  sign  that  pardons  me! 


420  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


II 

O my  God,  thou  hast  wounded  me  with  love, 
Behold  the  wound,  that  is  still  vibrating, 

O my  God,  thou  hast  wounded  me  with  love. 

O my  God,  thy  fear  hath  fallen  upon  me, 
Behold  the  burn  is  there,  and  it  throbs  aloud, 
O my  God,  thy  fear  hath  fallen  upon  me. 

0 my  God,  I have  known  that  all  is  vile 
And  that  thy  glory  hath  stationed  itself  in  me, 
0 my  God,  I have  known  that  all  is  vile. 

Drown  my  soul  in  floods,  floods  of  thy  wine, 
Mingle  my  life  with  the  body  of  thy  bread, 
Drown  my  soul  in  floods,  floods  of  thy  wine. 

Take  my  blood,  that  I have  not  poured  out, 
Take  my  flesh,  unworthy  of  suffering, 

Take  my  blood,  that  I have  not  poured  out. 

Take  my  brow,  that  has  only  learned  to  blush, 
To  be  the  footstool  of  thine  adorable  feet, 
Take  my  brow,  that  has  only  learned  to  blush. 


TRANSLATIONS 


421 


Take  my  hands,  because  they  have  laboured 
not 

For  coals  of  fire  and  for  rare  frankincense, 
Take  my  hands,  because  they  have  laboured 
not. 

Take  my  heart,  that  has  beaten  for  vain  things, 
To  throb  under  the  thorns  of  Calvary, 

Take  my  heart  that  has  beaten  for  vain  things. 

Take  my  feet,  frivolous  travellers, 

That  they  may  run  to  the  crying  of  thy  grace, 
Take  my  feet,  frivolous  travellers. 

Take  my  voice,  a harsh  and  a lying  noise, 

For  the  reproaches  of  thy  Penitence, 

Take  my  voice,  a harsh  and  a lying  noise 

Take  mine  eyes,  luminaries  of  deceit, 

That  they  may  be  extinguished  in  the  tears  of 
prayer, 

Take  mine  eyes,  luminaries  of  deceit. 

Alas,  thou,  God  of  pardon  and  promises, 

What  is  the  pit  of  mine  ingratitude, 

Alas,  thou,  God  of  pardon  and  promises. 


422  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


God  of  terror  and  God  of  holiness, 

Alas,  my  sinfulness  is  a black  abyss, 

God  of  terror  and  God  of  holiness. 

Thou,  God  of  peace,  of  joy  and  delight, 
All  my  tears,  all  my  ignorances, 

Thou,  God  of  peace,  of  joy  and  delight. 

Thou,  0 God,  knowest  all  this,  all  this, 
How  poor  I am,  poorer  than  any  man, 
Thou,  O God,  knowest  all  this,  all  this. 

And  what  I have,  my  God,  I give  to  thee. 


TRANSLATIONS 


423 


III 

Slumber  dark  and  deep 
Falls  across  my  life; 

I will  put  to  sleep 
Hope,  desire,  and  strife. 

All  things  pass  away, 
Good  and  evil  seem 
To  my  soul  to-day 
Nothing  but  a dream; 

I a cradle  laid 
In  a hollow  cave, 

By  a great  hand  swayed: 
Silence,  like  the  grave. 


424  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


IV 

The  body’s  sadness  and  the  languor  thereof 

Melt  and  bow  me  with  pity  till  I could  weep, 

Ah ! when  the  dark  hours  break  it  down  in  sleep 

And  the  bedclothes  score  the  skin  and  the  hot 
hands  move; 

Alert  for  a little  with  the  fever  of  day, 

Damp  still  with  the  heavy  sweat  of  the  night 
that  has  thinned, 

Like  a bird  that  trembles  on  a roof  in  the  wind : 

And  the  feet  that  are  sorrowful  because  of  the 
way, 

And  the  breast  that  a hand  has  scarred  with  a 
double  blow, 

And  the  mouth  that  as  an  open  wound  is  red, 

And  the  flesh  that  shivers  and  is  a painted 
show, 

And  the  eyes,  poor  eyes  so  lovely  with  tears 
unshed 

For  the  sorrow  of  seeing  this  also  over  and  done : 

Sad  body,  how  weak  and  how  punished  under 
the  sun ! 


TRANSLATIONS 


425 


V 

Fairer  is  the  sea 
Than  the  minster  high, 
Faithful  nurse  is  she, 

And  last  lullaby, 

And  the  Virgin  prays 
Over  the  sea’s  ways. 

Gifts  of  grief  and  guerdons 
From  her  bounty  come, 
And  I hear  her  pardons 
Chide  her  angers  home; 
Nothing  in  her  is 
Unforgivingness. 

She  is  piteous, 

She  the  perilous! 

Friendly  things  to  us 
The  wave  sings  to  us: 

You  whose  hope  is  past, 
Here  is  peace  at  last. 

And  beneath  the  skies, 
Brighter-hued  than  they, 
She  has  azure  dyes, 

Rose  and  green  and  grey. 

Better  is  the  sea 

Than  all  fair  things  or  we. 


426  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


From  Par  allelement: 

IMPRESSION  FAUSSE 

Little  lady  mouse, 

Black  upon  the  grey  of  light; 
Little  lady  mouse, 

Grey  upon  the  night. 

Now  they  ring  the  bell, 

All  good  prisoners  slumber  deep; 
Now  they  ring  the  bell, 

Nothing  now  but  sleep. 

Only  pleasant  dreams, 

Love’s  enough  for  thinking  of; 
Only  pleasant  dreams, 

Long  live  love! 

Moonlight  over  all, 

Someone  snoring  heavily; 
Moonlight  over  all 
In  reality. 


TRANSLATIONS 


427 


Now  there  comes  a cloud, 

It  is  dark  as  midnight  here; 
Now  there  comes  a cloud, 
Dawn  begins  to  peer. 

Little  lady  mouse, 

Rosy  in  a ray  of  blue, 

Little  lady  mouse: 

Up  now,  all  of  you! 


428  THE  SYMBOLIST  MOVEMENT 


From  Chansons  pour  Elle 

You  believe  that  there  may  be 
Luck  in  strangers  in  the  tea: 

I believe  only  in  your  eyes. 

You  believe  in  fairy-tales, 

Days  one  wins  and  days  one  fails: 

I believe  only  in  your  lies. 

You  believe  in  heavenly  powers, 

In  some  saint  to  whom  one  prays 
Or  in  some  Ave  that  one  says. 

I believe  only  in  the  hours, 
Coloured  with  the  rosy  lights 
You  rain  for  me  on  sleepless  nights. 

And  so  firmly  I receive 
These  for  truth,  that  I believe 
That  only  for  your  sake  I live. 


TRANSLATIONS 


429 


From  Epigrammes 

When  we  go  together,  if  I may  see  her  again, 

Into  the  dark  wood  and  the  rain; 

When  we  are  drunken  with  air  and  the  sun’s 
delight 

At  the  brink  of  the  river  of  light; 

When  we  are  homeless  at  last,  for  a moment’s^ 
space 

Without  city  or  abiding-place; 

And  if  the  slow  good-will  of  the  world  still  seem 

To  cradle  us  in  a dream; 

Then,  let  us  sleep  the  last  sleep  with  no  leave- 
taking, 

And  God  will  see  to  the  waking. 


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